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THE 

SECOND COMING 
OF CHRIST 

AN ESSAY IN INTERPRETATION 

BY THE 

REV. S. P. T. PRIDEAUX, B.D. 

M 

RECTOR OF DOGMERSFIELD, AND SOMETIME 

INCUMBENT OF CHELSEA OLD CHURCH, AND 

DEAN OF WHITELANDS COLLEGE 

TEMPORARY CHAPLAIN TO THE FORCES 



like enow 

They are building still, seeing the city is built 
To music, therefore never built at all, 
And therefore built lor ever." 



NEW YORK 

E. P. DUTTON & COMPANY 

681 FIFTH AVENUE 

1918 






Printed by 
Sir Isaac Pitman & Sons, Ltd., London, England 






PREFACE 

The difficulties of the Apocalyptic element in the 
Gospels have long been a sore puzzle to many, and 
much light has recently been thrown upon its inner 
meaning and its perennial value by the world- 
catastrophe of the war. The writer has here 
attempted to offer a solution for the one, and an 
interpretation of the other, hoping that both will 
be acceptable to thinking men and women of the 
present age who long for light and direction in its 
mazes and perplexities. A good deal of space is 
devoted to the Jewish element, as it is essential 
to realise this background of Our Lord's teaching ; 
and many references and quotations are given, in 
the hope that readers will be induced to turn to 
larger works and original documents, and study the 
subject for themselves. 

The writer further hopes that his words will lead 
many to perceive that the Kingship of Christ is an 
actual present fact and power, as well as a hope 
yet to be realised ; and, even more, that they will 
understand that this power is conveyed through 
the Holy Spirit. For it is not too much to say 
that all difficulties, whether personal, ecclesiastical, 
national, or world-wide, can be removed by an 
adequate appreciation of the Person of the Holy 
Spirit ; and that their persistence and seriousness 
has been almost entirely due to men's failure in 
this appreciation. If men had only taken Him 

ill 



PREFACE 

more into their counsels, followed His teaching, 
and claimed His power, in times past, Heaven 
to-day would have been far more of a reality and 
less of a dream. 

To Him, as our Teacher, Guide, Helper, and 
Strength, alone be glory, in the Father, through 
the Son. 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 

The following are the chief works alluded to or 
quoted, to which the student may care to refer — 

Abbott, E. A.— The Fourfold Gospel (1913-15). 

Beet, J. Agar— The Last Things (1905). 

Bruce, A. B. — The Kingdom of God (1904). 

Brown, W. A.— The Christian Hope (1912). 

Burkitt, F. C. — Jewish and Christian Apocalypses (1914). 

Charles, R. H. — Eschatology, Jewish and Christian, or the 
Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life (1913). 

Dahle, L. N. — Life after Death, and the Future of the 
Kingdom of God (1896). 

Dalman, G. — The Words of Jesus (1902). 

Davidson, S. — The Doctrine of the Last Things (1882). 

Dewick, E. C. — Primitive Christian Eschatology (1912). 

Dobschutz, E. von. — The Eschatology of the Gospels (1910). 

Drummond, J. — The Jewish Messiah (1877). 

Edersheim, A. — Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah (1901). 

Encyclopaedia Biblica. — Arts. : " Apocalyptic Literature/' 
" Eschatology/ ' " Eternity/ ' 

Encyclopaedia Britannica. — Arts. : " Apocalyptic Litera- 
ture," " Eschatology." 

Foundations (1912). 

Gayford, S. C.—The Future State (1903). 

Hastings. — D B. — Arts. : " Apocalyptic Literature," 
" Eschatology," " Parousia," " Millennium," " Devel- 
opment of Doctrine," " Religion of Israel," Ext. 710&., 
11 St. Matthew's Gospel," "-Son of Man." 

Hastings. — D C G. Arts. : " Apocalyptic Literature," 
" Messiah," " Eternal Life," " Eschatology," " Immor- 
tality," " Accommodation," " Day of Judgment," 
" St. Matthew's Gospel," " Life." 

Hugel, F. von.— Eternal Life (1912). 

Kennedy, H. A. A. — St. Paul's Conception of the Last 
Things (1904). 

Latimer- Jackson, W. — The Eschatology of Jesus (1913). 

Loisy, A. — Les Evangiles synoptiques (1907). 

MacNeile, A. H.— St. Matthew (1915). 

Manchester Church Congress, Report of. 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 

Moulton, J. H. and Milligan, G. — Vocabulary of the 

Greek Testament (1914). 
Muirhead, L. H. — The Eschatology of Jesus (1906). 
Oesterley, W. O. E. — The Doctrine of the Last Things 

(1908). 
Porter, F. C. — Messages of the Apocalyptic Writers. (1905). 
Pusey, E. B. — What is of Faith as to Everlasting Punishment? 

(1880). 
Riehm, A. — Messianic Prophecy (1891). 
Robertson, A. — Regnum Dei (1901). 
Report of Third Internal. Congress of Religions (Peabody 

and Von Dobschutz). 
Schurer, E. — The Jewish People in the Time of Christ, 

II. 3, 44 ff. (1885). 
Salmond, S. D. F. — The Christian Doctrine of Immortality 

(1895). 
Sanday, W. — The Life of Christ in Recent Research (1907); 

and a helpful Art. in the Hibbert Journal for Oct., 1911. 
Savage, H. E. — The Gospel of the Kingdom (1910). 
Schweitzer, A. — The Quest of the Historical Jesus (1910). 
Swete, H. B. — Some Biblical Questions of the Day. 
Terry, M. S.— Biblical Apocalyptics (1898). 
Toy, C. H. — Judaism and Christianity (1890). 
Tyrrell G. — Christianity at the Cross Roads (1909). 
Walpole, G. H. S. — This Time and its Interpretation (1915); 

The Kingdom of Heaven (Paddock Lectures, 1909). 
Winstanley, E. W. — Jesus and the Future (1913). 
Worsley, F. W.—The Apocalypse of Jesus (1912). 

And, of course, the Commentaries of W. C. Allen and A. 
Plummer on St. Matthew; H. B. Swete on St. Mark ; A. 
Plummer on St. Luke. 

The dates of each work, and the edition referred 
to, are given in brackets. 

The chief Jewish Pseudepigrapha quoted or 
alluded to are these, their dates being those ascribed 
to them by Dr. Charles — 

Jubilees. — A Midrash (Commentary) on Genesis and 
Exodus, (c. 135-105 b.c.) 

vi 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 

The Ascension of Isaiah. — Composite ; contains " The 
Martyrdom of Isaiah." (First century, a.d.) 

/ Enoch. — A composite work. Ch. i.-xxxvi. (before 170 
B.C.) ; xxxvii.-lxxi. (The Similitudes or Parables, 94-64 
B.C.); lxxii.-lxxxii. (c. 110 B.C.); lxxxiii.-xc. (The 
Dream- Visions, c. 166-161 B.C.); xci.-civ. (c. 95-79, 
or 70-64 b.c). 

The Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs. — The death-bed 
charges of the Sons of Jacob to their children (109- 
107 b.c). 

The Sibylline Oracles. — Of the fifteen original books and 
fragments (of which 9, 10, and 15 are lost), venerated 
at Rome, a Jewish author or authors took books 
3, 4, and 5, and worked them up as evidence in defence 
of Judaism, and subsequent additions and emendations 
were made at intervals by Jewish and Christian 
writers. They date between c. 160 b.c and the fifth 
century a.d. or later. 

The Assumption of Moses. — The story of the taking up of 
Moses into heaven and his farewell words. Date, 
7-30 a.d. (i.e., the book is contemporary with Our 
Lord). 

2 Enoch. — (The book of the secrets of Enoch, or Slavonic 
Enoch.) Date, a.d. 1-50. 

2 Baruch. — (The Apocalypse of Baruch.) Composite. 

Date, a.d. 50-90. 

3 Baruch. — Composite Date, c. a.d. 150. 

4 Ezra. — (2 Esdras in our Apocrypha.) Composite. Date, 

c. a.d. 120. 
The Psalms of Solomon. — Date 70-40 b.c 
The " Zadokite Fragment." — Describes a reform-movement 

from within the priesthood which took place about 

196-176 b.c Date, 18-8 b.c 



vli 



THE SECOND COMING 
OF CHRIST 

CHAPTER I 

There can be few thinking men and women who 
do not pass through a time of deep spiritual dis- 
satisfaction and discomfort, at least once every 
year, when the season of Advent comes round 
Thev recognise, easily and readily enough, that 
the "Second Coming of Our Lord is an article of 
the Church's faith ; the recurrence of the Advent 
Season does not allow them to forget it ; indeed, 
they witness to it every time that they worship 
by the congregation's repetition of one or other of 
the three Creeds, in which they declare that He 
shaU come again for judgment. But the singing 
of the customary Advent Hymns brings home to 
them, with painful emphasis, what at all events 
has hitherto been the Church's belief as to the 
nature of His coming ; and with her interpretation 
of it they find themselves profoundly and uncom- 
fortably in disagreement. They believe in, and 
cherish, the Christian Revelation; they profess 
themselves followers of Christ and loyal members 
of His Church ; they find in Christianity the satis- 
faction of their soul's need ; they recognise that 
the world's great and only need is Christianity ; 
they assent to its claim to be the one and only 

1 



THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST 

religion. But they feel that an intolerable burden 
is laid on them, an insult offered to their intelligence, 
even, and to the advance made by the human race 
in the apprehension and interpretation of reality, 
when they are asked to voice and to assent to the 
crude literalism and sensuous conceptions which 
previous ages have handed down. 

How can such people sing ex animo, and without 
qualms and reservations, such words as these ? — 

Lo ! He comes with clouds descending 
Once for favoured sinners slain ; 

Thousand thousand saints attending 
Swell the triumph of His train. 1 

Or these 2 — 

Great God, what do I see and hear ? 

The end of things created ; 
The Judge of all men doth appear 

On clouds of glory seated. 
The trumpet sounds, the graves restore 
The dead that they contained before ; 

Prepare, my soul, to meet Him. 

The dead in Christ are first to rise 
At that last trumpet's sounding, 

Caught up to meet Him in the skies, 
With joy their Lord surrounding. 

The ungodly, filled with guilty fears, 

Behold His wrath prevailing; 
In woe they rise, but all their tears 

And sighs are unavailing; 
The day of grace is past and gone; 
Trembling they stand before His Throne, 

All unprepared to meet Him. 

1 By C. Wesley and J. Cennick, middle of 18th Cent. 

2 By several authors, early 19th Cent. 

2 



THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST 

It is clear, even to limited intelligences, that if 
Our Lord appeared, say, in England, He would not 
be visible in Australia, even if the angelic trump 
be audible in both hemispheres ; no one locality 
could contain the entire population of the world ; 
and how long would the opening and reading of 
the Books take ? The opened graves would only 
surrender corruption, and what of men devoured 
by beasts, or blown to pieces in an explosion ? 
These conceptions of a visible, physical, return of 
Our Lord, with the literal clouds and archangel's 
trumpet, the gathering of nations, and the Great 
Assize, are, to the educated mind, so much child- 
ishness, and more reminiscent of the staging of 
Wagnerian opera, or even pantomime, than provo- 
cative of awe. They are not less offensive to the 
spiritually minded, who see in them something 
derogatory to the majesty of Christ, and require a 
spiritual and not material interpretation of the last 
days, which they deem more in harmony with Our 
Lord's deepest and best teaching, and required by 
the essentially progressive nature of all Revelation. x 

It is, of course, true that the writers of these 
and similar Hymns, and the preachers who at any 
time echo their sentiments, are but quoting or 
paraphrasing the words of Our Lord and His 
Apostles, as recorded in the New Testament ; and 
these words must command the respect of all men, 
both Christians and non-Christians alike. Thus, 
the Great Assize is described by St. Matthew 
(xxv. 31, cf. xxiv. 30) ; and the literal resurrection 

1 Cf. Latimer Jackson, Ch. ix. 

3 



THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST 

of the physical body may be inferred from St. Paul 
{1 Thess. iv. 15), although his words there must be 
taken with and qualified by those in 1 Cor. xv. 50 ff . 
But such mere transliteration will not stand ; these 
words and passages need more study and light, and 
more comparison with the rest of the teaching of 
Our Lord and His Apostles, before they render up 
their true meaning. And we shall not reach this 
true meaning until we have compared them also 
with the other current literature of the period, now, 
fortunately, made available for the student by the 
labours of Dr. Charles and other scholars ; only so 
will husk and kernel be separated, and the per- 
manent and essential stand out from the temporary, 
transient, and accessory. 

The clearest and fullest eschatological teaching 
of Our Lord is, of course, to be found in Mt. xxiv., 
and its parallels Mk. xiii., Lk. xxi., and there are a 
number of other passages in the Gospels bearing an 
eschatological character or phraseology, to all of 
which abundant parallels are to be found in the 
Jewish pseudepigraphical writings. It will be most 
convenient to take this central passage first by 
itself, and illustrate it from these books ; and then 
the other Gospel writings and expressions ; and 
then offer some comments and suggestions upon 
the problem in question. 

" And as He sat on the Mount of Olives, the 
disciples came unto Him privately, saying, Tell 
us, when shall these things be ? and what shall be 
the sign of Thy coming and of the end of the world ? " 



THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST 

(rather, as margin, " of the consummation of the 
age ? ") v. 3. 

Here, at once, we meet with three technical 
expressions, irapovala, avvTekeca, aldov, translated 
respectively by " coming, end, world.' ' * For a 
discussion of their meaning and use, see pp. 53 ff . 
But for their use here by St. Matthew, we may 
compare 1 Enoch i. 3 : " The Holy Great One 
will come forth from His dwelling." 

2 Enoch xxxii. 1 : " My second coming." 

1 Enoch xvi. 1 (Cf. x. 12) : " The day of the 
consummation, the great judgment in which the 
age shall be consummated/ ' 

T. Reub. vi. 8: "The consummation 2 of the 

times." 

T. Levi x. 2, xiv. 1 : " The end of the ages." 
T. Zeb. ix. 9 : " The time of consummation." 
T. Benj. xi. 3 : " The consummation of the age." 
Ass. Mos. i. 18 : " The consummation of the 

end of the days." 

2 Baruch xxi. 8, xxx. 3 : " The consummation 
of the times." 12: "The consummation of those 
who have been righteous." 17 : " If a consummation 
had not been prepared for all." 

2 Enoch lxv. 8 : " The great aeon." 
2 Baruch xliv. 15 : M The world to come " ; 
1 Enoch lxxi. 15. 
4 Ezra viii. 1 : " This age — the age to come." 
Cf. Matt. xii. 32 ; Mark x. 30 ; Luke xx. 35. 



1 Cf. John vi. 39, 54 : " The last day." 

2 reKeiooais; see Charles's note. 



THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST 

" And Jesus answered and said unto them, Take 
heed that no man lead you astray. For many 
shall come in My name, saying, I am the Christ ; 
and shall lead many astray. And ye shall hear of 
wars and rumours of wars ; see that ye be not 
troubled ; for these things must needs come to 
pass : but the end is not yet. For nation shall 
rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom : 
and there shall be famines and earthquakes in 
divers places. But all these things are the begin- 
ning of travail. Then shall they deliver you up 
unto tribulation, and shall kill you ; and ye shall 
be hated of all the nations for My name's sake. 
And then shall many stumble, and shall deliver 
up one another, and shall hate one another. And 
many false prophets shall arise, and shall lead 
many astray. And because iniquity shall be 
multiplied, the love of the many shall wax cold. 
But he that endureth to the end, the same shall 
be saved. And this gospel of the kingdom shall 
be preached in the whole world for a testimony 
unto all the nations ; and then shall the end come." 
(vv. 4-14.) Cf. Matt. x. 21, 34, 35 : " And brother 
shall deliver up brother to death, and the father 
his child ; and children shall rise up against parents, 
and cause them to be put to death. ... I came not 
to send peace, but a sword. For I came to set a 
man at variance against his father, and the daughter 
against her mother ... a man's foes shall be they 
of his own household." And Luke xii. 49 : "I 
came to cast fire upon the earth." 

Here, Our Lord declares that the end shall be 



THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST 

preceded by the appearance of false claimants to 
the Messiahship, and their success in gathering 
adherents ; by wars and rumours of wars, famines, 
and earthquakes ; by the persecution of His 
disciples, by the increase of wickedness ; by mutual 
hatred and strife, and by the evangelisation of the 
world. Similar predictions are found in — 

1 Enoch i. 1; lv. 3 : " The day of tribulation/' 
i. 5, 6, 7 : 

" And all shall be smitten with fear, 
And the watchers shall quake 
And great fear and trembling shall seize them 
unto the ends of the earth. 

And the high mountains shall be shaken, 
And the high hills shall be made low, 
And shall melt like wax before the flame. 

And the earth shall be wholly rent in sunder, 
And all that is upon the earth shall perish. 
And there shall be a judgment upon all men." 

xci. 5 : "I know that violence must increase on 
the earth." 
c. 12: 

" And in those days in one place the fathers 
together with their sons shall be smitten 
And brothers one with another shall fall in 

death. 
Till the streams flow with their blood. 
For a man shall not withhold his hand from 
slaying his sons and his son's sons, 

7 



THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST 

And the sinner shall not withhold his hand 

from his honoured brother : 
From dawn till sunset they shall slay one 
another/' 
2 Bar. lxx. 3, 6 : 

" And they shall hate one another, 
And provoke one another to fight. . . ." 



" Then shall confusion fall upon all men, 
And some of them shall fall in battle, 
And some of them shall perish in anguish, 
And some of them shall be destroyed by 
their own." 
Sib. iii. 41-43 : " For no man of wealth endowed 
with goods will give any part to another, but 
miserable meanness shall be among all mortals, and 
faith they shall never keep at all, . . . " 

4 Ezra v. 2 : " Iniquity shall be increased above 
that which thou thyself now seest or that thou hast 
heard of long ago." 

xiii. 31 : " Behold the days come when the 
Most High is about to deliver them that are upon 
the earth. And there shall come astonishment of 
mind upon the dwellers on earth ; and they shall 
plan to war one against another, city against city, 
place against place, people against people, and 
kingdom against kingdom/' 

Cf. also 1 Enoch xcix. 5 ; T. Levi iv. 1 ; 
Isa. xix. 1, 2. 

Compare Matt. xxiv. 19 : " Woe to them that 

8 



THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST 

are with child and to them that give suck in those 
days ! " with 2 Bar. x. 14 : M For the barren shall 
above all rejoice, and those who have no sons shall 
be glad, and those who have sons shall have anguish/ ' 
Cf. Luke xxiii. 29 : " Behold the days are coming, 
in which they shall say, Blessed are the barren, 
and the wombs that never bare, and the breasts 
that never gave suck/' 

Compare xxiv. 21 : " For then shall be great 
tribulation, such as hath not been from the beginning 
of the world until now, no, nor ever shall be," with 
Ass. Mos. viii. 1 : " And there shall come upon 
them a second visitation and wrath, such as hath 
not befallen them from the beginning until that 
time." 1 Enoch xlv. 2 (cf. xcviii. 10) : " the day 
of suffering and tribulation." Dan. xii. 1 : " And 
there shall be a time of trouble, such as never was 
since there was a nation even to that same time." 

Compare xxiv. 22 : " Those days shall be short- 
ened," with 2 Bar. xx. 1 : " Therefore, behold ! 
the days come, and the times shall hasten more 
than the former, and the seasons shall speed on 
more than those that are past, and the years shall 
pass more quickly than the present (years)." For 
the " elect," cf. 1 Enoch xciii. 2 : " The elect of the 
world " ; 10 : " The elect righteous." 

Compare xxiv. 5, 24 : " There shall arise false 
Christs, and false prophets, and shall shew great 
signs and wonders ; so as to lead astray, if possible, 
even the elect," with Sib. hi. 65 ff. : " He (Beliar) 
shall perform many signs for men . . . nay, he 
deceives mortals, and many shall he deceive. 



THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST 

Hebrews faithful and elect and lawless too " ; and 
2 Bar. xlviii. 34. 

Compare xxiv. 27 : "As the lightning cometh 
forth from the east, and is seen even unto the 
west : so shall be the coming {irapovaia) of the Son 
of Man," with 2 Bar. liii. 9 : " Now that lightning 
shone exceedingly, so as to illuminate the whole 
earth." 

xxiv. 29 ff . describes the portents which shall 
precede the coming of the Son of Man, a passage 
couched in current eschatological language, and 
possessing abundant parallels : " But immediately 
after the tribulation of those days, the sun shall 
be darkened, and the moon shall not give her light, 
and the stars shall fall from heaven M (St. Luke adds : 
" And upon the earth distress of nations, in per- 
plexity for the roaring of the sea and the billows ; 
men fainting for fear, and for expectation of the 
things which are coming on the world "), " and the 
powers of the heavens shall be shaken : and then 
shall appear the sign of the Son of Man in heaven : 
and then shall all the tribes of the earth mourn, 
and they shall see the Son of Man coming on the 
clouds of heaven with power and great glory. 
And He shall send forth His angels with a great 
sound of a trumpet, and they shall gather together 
His elect from the four winds, from one end of 
heaven to the other." Cf. Matt. xxvi. 64 : " Hence- 
forth ye shall see the Son of Man sitting at the 
right hand of power, and coming on the clouds of 
heaven.' ' 

Here, compare 4 Ezra v. 1 ff . : 

10 



THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST 

" Behold, the days come when the inhabitants 
of earth shall be seized with great panic, 

And the way of truth shall be hidden, and 
the land be barren of faith. 

And iniquity shall be increased . . . 

Then shall the sun suddenly shine forth by 

night and the moon by day : 
And blood shall trickle forth from wood, and 

the stone utter its voice : 
The peoples shall be in commotion, 

The outgoings of the stars shall change. 
. . . the birds shall take to general flight, 

and the sea shall cast forth its fish. 

And the earth o'er wide regions shall open, 
and the fire burst forth for a long period : 

The wild beasts shall desert their haunts, and 
women bear monsters. 

And one-year old children shall speak with 
their voices ; pregnant women shall bring 
forth untimely births at three or four 
months, and these shall live and dance. 
And suddenly shall the sown places appear 
unsown, and the full storehouses shall 
suddenly be found empty. 

Salt waters shall be found in the sweet ; 
friends shall attack one another suddenly. 

Then shall intelligence hide itself, and wisdom 
withdraw to its chamber — by many shall 
be sought and not found. 

And unrighteousness and incontinency shall 
11 



THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST 

be multiplied upon the earth. One land 
shall also ask another and say : Is Right- 
eousness — that doeth the right — passed 
through thee ? And it shall answer, No. 
And it shall be 

In that time men shall hope and not obtain, 
shall labour and not prosper." 
vi. 23 : " And the trumpet shall sound aloud, 
at which all men, when they hear it, shall be struck 
with sudden fear." 

ix. 3 : " When in the world there shall appear 
quakings of places, tumults of peoples, schemings 
of nations, confusion of leaders, disquietude of 
princes, then shalt thou understand that it is of 
these things the Most High has spoken since the 
days that were aforetime from the beginning/ ' 

Sib. iv. 56 ff. : " Darkling night shall fall at the 
middle hour of day : the stars and the moon's disc 
shall fail from heaven. And the earth shaken by 
the upheaval of a mighty earthquake shall cast 
down headlong many cities and works of men. . . . 
Then there shall be all those evil works which men 
pray to be spared, wars, and murders, schisms and 
exiles." 
Ass. Mos. x. 3 ff . : 

" For the Heavenly One shall arise from His 
royal throne, 
And He will go forth from His holy habitation 
With indignation and wrath on account ot 

His sons. 
And the earth shall tremble : to its confines 
shall it be shaken : 
12 



THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST 

And the high mountains be made low 
And the hills shall be shaken and fall. 
And the horns of the sun shall be broken and 

he shall be turned into darkness ; 
And the moon shall not give her light, and be 

turned wholly into blood. 
And the circle of the stars shall be disturbed. 
And the sea shall retire into the abyss, 
And the fountains of waters shall fail, 
And the rivers shall dry up." 
Isa. xiii. 10 : " For the stars of heaven and the 
constellations thereof shall not give their light : 
the sun shall be darkened in his going forth, and the 
moon shall not cause her light to shine/ ' Ezek: 
xxxii. 7 ; Joel ii. 10, 31 ; hi. 15 ; Amos v. 20 ; 
viii. 9 ; Zeph. i. 15. 

Dan. vii. 13 : " Behold, there came with the 
clouds of heaven one like unto a son of man." 

Zech. xii. 12 : " And the land shall mourn, every 
family apart " ; ii. 6 : "J have spread you abroad 
as the four winds of heaven" ; in the LXX., "from 
the four winds will I gather you " ; Deut. xxx. 4. 
Also T. Levi iv. 1 ; 2 Bar. xxvii. ; Jub. xxiii. 18 ff. ; 
see Charles, Pseudep, p. 375. 

The " Great Assize " is described in Matt. 
xxv. 31 ff.— 

"But when the Son of Man shall come in His 
glory, and all the angels with Him, x then shall 

1 Cf. John i. 51 : " Ye shall see the heaven opened, and 
the angels of God ascending and descending upon the 
Son of Man." Matt. xxvi. 53 : " Shall even now send me 
more than twelve legions of angels." 

13 



THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST 

He sit on the throne of His glory 1 and before Him 
shall be gathered all the nations : and He shall 
separate them one from another, as the shepherd 
separateth the sheep from the goats : and He shall 
set the sheep on the right hand, but the goats on 
the left. Then shall the King say unto them on 
His right hand, Come, ye blessed of My Father, 
inherit the Kingdom prepared for you from the 
foundation of the world : for I was an hungred, 
and ye gave Me meat : I was thirsty and ye gave 
Me drink : I was a stranger, and ye took Me in : 
naked, and ye clothed Me : I was sick, and ye 
visited Me : I was in prison, and ye came unto 
Me. Then shall the righteous answer Him, saying, 
Lord, when saw we Thee an hungred, and fed Thee ? 
or athirst, and gave Thee drink ? And when saw 
we Thee a stranger, and took Thee in ? or naked, 
and clothed Thee ? And when saw we Thee sick, 
or in prison, and came unto Thee ? And the King 
shall answer and say unto them. Verily, I say 
unto you, Inasmuch as ye did it unto one of these 
My brethren, even these least, ye did it unto Me. 
Then shall He say also unto them on the left hand : 
Depart from Me, ye cursed, into the eternal fire 
which is prepared for the devil and his angels : for 
I was an hungred, and ye gave Me no meat ; I was 
thirsty and ye gave Me no drink : I was a stranger, 
and ye took Me not in ; naked, and ye clothed 
Me not ; sick, and in prison, and ye visited Me not. 
Then shall they also answer, saying, Lord, when 

1 Rev. xx. 11. 

14 



THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST 

saw we Thee an hungred, or athirst, or a stranger, 
or naked, or sick, or in prison, and did not minister 
unto Thee ? Then shall He answer them, saying, 
Verily, I say unto you. Inasmuch as ye did it not 
unto one of these least, ye did it not unto Me. 
And these shall go away into eternal punishment ; 
but the righteous into eternal life/' 1 

With this familiar passage, cf. 4 Ezra vii. 33, 37, 38: 
" And the Most High shall be revealed upon the 
throne of judgment : 

And then shall the Most High say to the 
nations that have been raised [from the 
dead] ; 
Look now and consider Whom ye have denied, 
Whom ye have not served, Whose command- 
ments ye have despised. 
Look, now, before you : 

here delight and refreshment, 
there fire and torments ! " 
2 Bar. lxxii. 2 : " After the signs have come, of 
which thou wast told before, when the nations 
become turbulent, and the time of my Messiah is 
come, He shall both summon all the nations, and 
some of them He shall spare, and some of them 
He shall slay." 

Joel hi. 12 : " Let the nations bestir themselves, 
and come up to the valley of Jehoshaphat ; for 
there will I sit to judge all the nations round 
about/ ' 

1 Cf. xvi. 27. 

15 



THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST 

For the sheep and goats, cf. Ezekiel's parable of 
the cattle and sheep and goats, xxxiv. 17. 

Dan. xii. 2 : " Some to everlasting life, and 
some to shame and everlasting contempt/ ' 

A close parallel is found in 1 Enoch lxii. 1-5 : 
so close that Mr. Burkitt argues that Our Lord 
must have been familiar with the passage — 

" And thus the Lord commanded the kings, and 
the mighty and the exalted, and those 
who dwell on the earth, and said : 
' Open your eyes and lift up your horns if 
ye are able to recognise the Elect One/ 
And the Lord of Spirits seated Him on the 

throne of His glory, 
And the Spirit of righteousness was poured 

out upon Him, 
And the word of His mouth slays all the 

Sinners. 
And all the unrighteous are destroyed from 

before His face. 
And there shall stand up in that day all the 

kings, and the mighty. 
And the exalted and those who hold the earth. 
And they shall see and recognise 
How He sits on the throne of His glory, 
And righteousness is judged before Him, 
And no lying word is spoken before Him. 

And one portion of them shall look on the 

other, 
And they shall be terrified. 
And they shall be downcast of countenance, 

16 



THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST 

And pain shall seize them, 
When they see that Son of Man 
Sitting on the throne of His glory." 
cii. 3 : " The Great Glory." 
Cf. Luke xxi. 36 : " That ye may prevail ... to 
stand before the Son of Man." 

v. 6 speaks of " Him who rules over all " ; 
cf. Matt, xxviii. 18 : " All authority hath been given 
Me in heaven and on earth." 

For " His right hand," cf. T. Benj. x. 6 : " Ye 
shall see . . . rising on the right hand in 
gladness." 

A strikingly close parallel, too close to have been 
accidental, is found in T. Jos. i. 5, 6 : "I was beset 
with hunger, and the Lord Himself nourished 
me " ; 

" I was alone, and God comforted me ; 
I was sick, and the Lord visited me ; 
I was in prison, and My God showed favour 

unto me ; 
In bonds, and He released me." 
With the same passage, cf. 2 Enoch ix. 1 : " This 
place is reserved for the righteous, who . . . give 
bread to the hungering, and cover the naked with 
clothing, and raise up the fallen, and help injured 
orphans .... and for them is prepared this place 
for eternal inheritance." 

And 4 Ezra ix. 10 : " For all who failed to 
recognise Me in their lifetime, although I dealt 
bountifully with them." 

In 2 Enoch x. 4 is described a place of fiery 
torments (and partly of piercing cold) which is 

17 



THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST 

" prepared for " the wicked, " for eternal inherit- 
ance/ ' And 1 Enoch liv. mentions " a deep valley 
with burning fire M with " iron chains of immeasur- 
able weight," which " are being prepared for the 
hosts of Azazel." 

St. Luke's version of the same utterance of Our 
Lord is very similar, but has some variations. 
With one of these there are two parallels : Lk. 
xxi. 28, " But when these things begin to come to 
pass, look up, and lift up your heads ; because 
your redemption draweth nigh." Here, cf. 1 Enoch 
li. 2 : " The day has drawn nigh that they should 
be saved " ; and 2 Bar. xxiii. 7 : " For truly my 
redemption has drawn nigh, and is not far distant 
as aforetime." 

Other passages and phrases of an eschatological 
character are — 

Matt. v. 22 : " The hell (Gehenna) of fire." This, 
a common expression in Our Lord's mouth, is no 
less common in the Jewish literature ; * it is, in 
fact, one of the stock phrases and conceptions used 
to describe the punishment and fate of the wicked, 
whether angels or men. Gehenna is the trans- 
literation of Ge-Hinnom, i.e., the Valley of Hinnom, 
a ravine on the S. of Jerusalem, where the Israelites 
had at one time offered human sacrifices to Moloch ; 2 
and had been condemned by Josiah 3 to be kept 
as a place for the destruction of refuse. Here were 

1 Cf. Isa. lxvi. 24. 

2 2 Chron. xxviii. 3, xxxiii. 6. 

3 2 Kin. xxiii. 10. 

18 



THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST 

fires perpetually burning, and the whole place was 
a scene of ghastly and unpleasant corruption, and 
it became a natural parable for Jewish teachers. 
Cf. 1 Enoch xxvii. 2 : " This accursed valley is for 
those who are accursed for ever " ; xc. 26, 27 : 
" And I saw at that time how a like abyss was 
opened in the midst of the earth, full of fire, and 
they brought those blinded sheep (i.e., apostate 
Jews) and they were all judged and found guilty 
and cast into this fiery abyss and they burned ; 
now this abyss was to the right of that house/' x 

For the conception of " fire," we may compare 
1 Enoch x. 6 : " On the day of the great judgment 
he shall be cast into the fire " ; x. 13 : " The abyss 
of fire " ; xcviii. 3 : " Their spirits shall be cast 
into the furnace of fire " ; c. 9 : " In blazing flames 
burning worse than fire shall ye burn " ; Ps. Sol. 
xv. 6 : " The flame of fire and the wrath against 
the unrighteous shall not touch him/' 

A parallel figure is that of the " worm " ; 2 for 
which cf. 1 Enoch xlvi. 6 : " worms shall be their 
bed " ; Isa. lxvi. 24. 

In Matt. vii. 13, Our Lord alludes to the current 
doctrine of the " Two Ways " : 3 " Enter ye in by 
the narrow gate : for wide is the gate, and broad is 
the way, that leadeth to destruction ; and many 
be they that enter in thereby. For narrow is the 
gate, and straitened the way, that leadeth unto 
life, and few be they that find it." 

1 Hinnom was S. of Jerusalem. 

2 Mark ix. 48. 

3 Derived ultimately from Jer. xxi. 8. 

19 



THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST 

Here, cf. 4 Ezra vii. 4, 5, 12, 13 : " There is a 
sea lying in a wide expanse so that it is broad and 
vast ; but the entrance thereto lies in a narrow 
space so as to be like a river. He then, that really 
desireth to go upon the sea to behold it or to navigate 
it, if he pass not through the narrow part, how shall 
he be able to come into the broad ? . . . The ways 
of this world became narrow and sorrowful and 
painful, and full of perils coupled with great toils. 
But the ways of the future world are broad and safe, 
and yield the fruit of immortality " ; 2 Enoch 
xxx. 15 : " I . . . showed him the two ways, the 
light and the darkness, and I told him ' This is 
good, and that bad/ " 

In Matt. viii. 11 appears another common concep- 
tion, the Messianic banquet : " Many shall come 
from the East and the West, and shall sit down 1 
with Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, in the kingdom 
of heaven. " Cf. xxvi. 29 : . " I will not drink 
henceforth of this fruit of the vine, until that day 
when I drink it new with you in My Father's 
kingdom/' Lk. xiv. 15 : " Blessed is he that shall 
eat bread in the Kingdom of God." 

Here, cf. 1 Enoch lxii. 14 : " With that Son of 
Man shall they eat " ; 4 Ezra ix. 19 : "a world 
made ready with both an unfailing table and an 
inexplorable pasture/' 

Isa. xxv. 6 : "In this mountain shall the Lord 
of Hosts make unto all peoples a feast of fat things, 

1 Lit. " recline at table.' ' 

20 



THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST 

a feast of wines on the lees, of fat things full of 
marrow, of wines on the lees well refined." 1 

For the casting of the unworthy sons of the 
kingdom out into the " outer darkness," and " the 
weeping and the gnashing of teeth" 2 cf. 4 Ezra 
vii. 125: " Our faces shall be blacker than darkness." 

In Matt. viii. 29, the demons beseech Our Lord 
not to torment them " before the time " ; i.e., they 
recognised Him as the Messiah, and He neither 
disallowed their witness (in Lk. iv. 41, He " suffered 
not the demons to speak, because they knew Him 
to be the Christ "), nor their implication that there 
was a time for judgment and torment already fixed. 

For this we may cf. 1 Enoch xvi. 1 : " From the 
days of the slaughter and destruction and death of 
the giants, from the souls of whose flesh the spirits, 
having gone forth, shall destroy without incurring 
judgment . . . thus shall they destroy until the 
day of the consummation, the great judgment in 
which the age shall be consummated." 

The " day of judgment," also called " that day," 
" that great day," deriving ultimately from Amos 
v. 18, cf. Joel i. 15, Isa. ii. 12, etc., is too common a 
conception in both Gospels and Jewish literature to 
need further quotation ; the student may care to 

1 In 2 Bar. xxix. 4, 4 Ezra vi. 49 fL, it is said that 
Behemoth and Leviathan are being kept in order to provide 
the substance of this banquet, which throws light on the 
obscure verse Ps. lxxiv. 14. 

2 Note the articles. 

21 



THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST 

refer to 1 Enoch x. 6, 1. 1, liv. 6, lx. 6, 25, lxi. 8, 

lxii., lxxxiv. 4, xci. 15, xcviii. 10, ciii. 8 ; Sib. 

iii. 91, 670, iv. 41, 183; 4 Ezra vii. 33; Ps. Sol. 
ii. 37, xv. 12. 

In Matt. x. 33, we read : " Whosoever shall deny 
Me before man, him will I also deny before My 
Father which is in Heaven/ ' 

For this, cf. 1 Enoch xxxviii. 2 : " Those who have 
denied the Lord of Spirits " ; xlviii. 10 : " They 
have denied the Lord of Spirits and His Anointed/ ' 

With Matt. xi. 25: " I thank Thee . . . that Thou 
didst hide these things from the wise and prudent, 
and didst reveal them unto babes " ; cf. 1 Enoch 
xlvi. 3: " The Son of Man . . . who revealeth all the 
treasures of that which is hidden/' 

Another strongly eschatological passage is Matt, 
xiii. 37 ff., the parable of the tares : "He that 
sowed the good seed is the Son of Man ; and the 
field is the world ; and the good seed, these are 
the sons of the kingdom ; and the tares are the sons 
of the evil one ; and the enemy that sowed them 
is the devil ; and the harvest is the consummation 
of the age (crvvreXeca rob al&vos) ; and the reapers 
are angels. * As therefore the tares are gathered 
up and burned with fire ; so shall it be in the 
consummation of the age. The Son of Man shall 
send forth His angels, and they shall gather out of 

1 Cf. John iv. 35 : " The fields. . . are white already unto 
harvest/' 

22 



THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST 

His Kingdom all things that cause stumbling, and 
them that do iniquity, and shall cast them into the 
furnace of fire ; there shall be the weeping and the 
gnashing of teeth. Then shall the righteous shine 
forth as the sun in the kingdom of their Father/' 
And xiii. 47 ff., the parable of the net: "The 
angels shall come forth, and sever the wicked from 
among the righteous, and shall cast them into the 
furnace of fire ; there shall be the weeping and the 
gnashing of teeth/ ' 

With this passage, cf. 2 Bar. lxx. 2 — 

" Behold ! the days come, and it shall be when 
the time of the age has ripened, 
And the harvest of its evil and good seeds 

has come, 

That the Mighty One will bring upon the 

earth and its inhabitants and upon its rulers 

Perturbation of spirit and stupor of heart/' 

4 Ezra iv. 28 : " The evil concerning which thou 

askest me is sown, but the ingathering of it is not 

yet come/' 

1 Enoch c. 4 — 
" In those da3^s the angels shall descend into 
the secret places, 
And gather together into one place all those 
who brought down sin, ..." 
Joel iii. 13 : " Put ye in the sickle, for the harvest 
is ripe/' 

1 Enoch xliii. describes " other lightnings and 
the stars of heaven," and explains these as " the 
holy who dwell on the earth and believe in the 
name of the Lord of Spirits for ever and ever/* 

23 



THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST 

1 Enoch xxxix. 7 : " The righteous and elect 
before Him shall be strong as fiery lights." 

civ. 2 : " Now ye shall shine as the lights of 
heaven." 

Cf. Dan. xii. 3 : " They that be wise shall shine 
as the brightness of the firmament; and they that 
turn many to righteousness as the stars for ever 
and ever." 

cviii. 14 : " The righteous shall be resplendent." 
Wisd. iii. 7— 

" In the time of their visitation they shall 
shine forth, 
And as sparks among stubble they shall run 
to and fro." 
4 Ezra vii. 97, 123 : " Their face is destined to 
shine as the sun . . . the faces of such as have 
practised abstinence shall shine above the stars." 
Cf. 2 Bar. li. 3, 10. 

In Matt. xix. 28, a fresh expression appears : " In 
the regeneration (iraXiyyeveaia, cf. Acts iii. 21) 
when the Son of Man shall sit on the throne of His 
glory, ye also shall sit upon twelve thrones, judging 
the twelve tribes of Israel." 1 

For this, cf. 2 Bar. xxxii. 6 : " When the Mighty 
One will renew His creation." 

4 Ezra vii. 75 : " Until those times come in 
which Thou shalt renew the creation." Jub. i. 29 : 
" The day of the [new] creation when the heavens 
and the earth shall be renewed." 

1 Discussed by Dalman, p. 177. 

24 



THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST 

1 Enoch cviii. 12 : "I will seat each on the 
throne of his honour. Cf. Asc. Isa. ix. 10, 18. 

The phrase " the throne of His glory " is common. 
See 1 Enoch xlv. 3, xlvii. 3, li. 3, lv. 4, lx. 1, lxi. 8, 
lxii., lxix. 27, xc. 20 ; Dan. vii. 9 ff. ; T. Jud. xxv. 1 : 
11 1 and my brethren shall be chiefs of the tribes of 
Israel/ ' 

C/. Matt. xx. 21 : " Command that these my 
two sons may sit, one on Thy right hand, and one 
on Thy left hand, in Thy kingdom." 

For the next verses, Matt. xix. 29, 30 : " Everyone 
that hath left houses, or brethren, or sisters, or 
father, or mother, or children, or lands, for My 
Name's sake, shall receive a hundred fold, 1 and 
shall inherit eternal life. But many shall be last 
that are first ; and first that are last " ; cf. 2 Enoch 
1. 5 : " Whoever of you spends gold or silver for 
his brother's sake, he will receive ample treasure 
in the world to come." 

1 Enoch xl. 9 : " Those who inherit eternal life/* 
4 Ezra v. 42 : " Just as there is no retardation of 

them that are last, even so there is no hastening of 
those that are first." 

2 Bar. li. 13 : " For the first shall receive the 
last, those whom they were expecting, and the last 
those of whom they used to hear that they had 
passed away." 

With Matt. xxii. 14 : " Many are called, but few 

1 St. Luke : " Manifold more in this time." 

25 



THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST 

chosen/' cf. 4 Ezra viii. 1 : " This age the Most 
High has made for many, but the age to come 
for few." 

With Matt. xxii. 30 : " In the resurrection they 
neither marry, nor are given in marriage, but are 
as angels in heaven," cf. 2 Bar. li. 10 — 

" For in the heights of that world shall they 
dwell, 
And they shall be made like unto the angels, 
And be made equal to the stars, 
And they shall be changed into every form 

they desire, 
From beauty into loveliness, 
And from light into the splendour of glory." 
1 Enoch civ. 6 : "Ye shall be companions of 
the hosts of heaven." Cf. xv. 3 ff . 

On the passage Matt. xxii. 23 ff., Dr. Charles 
says : " The conception of the future life portrayed 
in Our Lord's reply tallies almost exactly in thought 
and partially in word with that described in (1 
Enoch) xci.-civ., according to which there is to be 
a resurrection indeed, but a resurrection of the 
spirit." 1 

With Matt, xxiii. 38 : " Your house is left unto 
you desolate," cf. 1 Enoch lxxxix. 56 : "I saw that 
He forsook that their house and their tower." 

Jer. xii. 7 : "I have forsaken mine house, I have 

1 The Book of Enoch, p. cviii. 

26 



THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST 

cast off mine heritage " ; xxii. 5 : " This house 
shall become a desolation." 

With Matt. xxiv. 36 : " But of that day and hour 
knoweth no one, not even the angels of heaven, 
neither the Son, but the Father only," cf. 2 Enoch 
xxiv. 3 : " For not to my angels have I told my 
secret " ; xl. 3 : " Not even the angels see their 
number. " 

With Luke x. 18 ff. (the return of the Seventy) : 
" I beheld Satan fallen as lightning from heaven. 
Behold, I have given you authority to tread upon 
serpents and scorpions, and over all the power of 
the enemy ; and nothing shall in any wise hurt 
you. Howbeit, in this rejoice not, that the spirits 
are subject unto you ; but rejoice that your names 
are written in heaven " (cf. Matt. xii. 28 : " How 
can one enter into the house of the strong man, 
and spoil his goods, except he first bind the strong 
man ? " — in the passage about casting out devils 
through Beelzebub ; Isa. xiv. 12 : " How art thou 
fallen from heaven, O day star, son of the morning!"). 
Cf. T. Sim. vi. 5 — 
" For the Lord God shall appear on earth, 
And Himself save men. 
Then shall all the spirits of deceit be trodden 

under foot, 
And men shall rule over wicked spirits/ ' 
T. Levi xviii. 12 — 

" And Beliar shall be bound by Him, 
And He shall give power to His children 
to tread upon the evil spirits/ ' 

27 






THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST 

1 Enoch xlvii. 3 : " The books of the living." 
civ. 1 : " Your names are written before the glory 

of the Great One." 
cviii. 3, 7 : " Their names shall be blotted out 

of the book of life and out of the holy books, . . . 

for some of them are written and inscribed above 

in the heaven." Cf. Dan. vii. 10, xii. 1 ; 4 Ezra 

vi. 20. 

With Luke xiv. 14 : " The resurrection of the 
just," cf. Sib. iv. 187 : " All who are godly shall 
live again on earth." In T. Benj. x. 6-8, three 
stages of resurrection are noted, of the patriarchs, 
then of Israel, then of all men, good and evil. 

With John v. 29 : " They that have done good, 
unto the resurrection of life," cf. Ps. Sol. iii. 16 : 
" They that fear the Lord shall rise to life 
eternal." 

With Luke xvi. 8, John xii. 36 : " Sons of the 
light," cf. 1 Enoch lxi. 12 : " Every spirit of light," 
cviii. 11 : " The generation of light." 

With Luke xvi. 9 : " The eternal tabernacles," 
cf. 2 Ezra ii. 11 : " The eternal tabernacles." 

With Luke xvi. 11: "Unrighteous mammon," 
cf. 1 Enoch lxiii. 10 : " Unrighteous gain." 

In the parable of Dives and Lazarus, Luke 
xvi. 19 ff., Dives sees Lazarus in Abraham's bosom. 
It was held that Heaven and Hell were in full view 

28 



THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST 

of one another ; cf. the passages in the Psalms 
where the righteous rejoice in seeing the punishment 
of the wicked (e.g., xxxvii. 34, lii. 6, xci. 8, etc.); 
and Isa. xiv. 9 ff. 

Thus, 4 Ezra vii. 36 — 

" And then shall the pit of torment appear, 
And over against it the place of refreshment ; 
The furnace of Gehenna shall be made 
manifest, and over against it the Paradise 
of delight." 
Ass. Mos. x. 10 — 

M And thou shalt look from on high and shalt 
see thine enemies in Gehenna, 
And thou shalt recognise them and rejoice 
And thou shalt give thanks and confess Thy 
Creator." 
Dives appeals to Abraham, who is thus invested 
with the office of " sinner's friend " ; for which 
doctrine cf. 2 Enoch liii. 1 : u And now, my children, 
do not say, ' Our father is standing before God, 
and is praying for our sins/ for there is no helper 
of any man who has sinned." (Cf. 2 Mace. xv. 14 ; 
Jos. Ant. i. 13. 3 ; Matt, xxvii. 47, 49, iii. 9 (?) ; 
Heb. vii. 25.) 

He asks that Lazarus may quench his thirst, for 
he is " in anguish in this flame " ; cf. A Ezra viii. 59 : 
u As the things aforesaid abide for you, so thirst 
and anguish await them"; 1 Enoch xxii. 11: 
1 Their spirits shall be set apart in this great pain " ; 
c. 7 : " The day of strong anguish." 

Isa. lxvi. 24 : " Neither shall their fire be 
quenched." 

29 



THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST 

For the word " Paradise " in Luke xxiii. 43 (the 
Word to the Penitent Thief), of. 1 Enoch xxxii. 3 : 
" The Garden of Righteousness " ; lx. 8 : " The 
garden where the elect and righteous dwell " ; 
lxi. 12 : " The garden of life " ; 4 Ezra viii. 52 : 
" For you is opened Paradise " ; T. Levi xviii. 10 : 
" He shall open the gates of Paradise." 

With John iii. 19 : x " This is the judgment, that 
the light is come into the world," cf. 2 Enoch xlvi. 3 : 
" When the Lord shall send a great light, then 
there will be judgment for the just and the unjust," 
cf. John viii. 12 : "I am the light of the world." 

With John v. 22 : "He hath given all judgment 
unto the Son," cf. 1 Enoch lxix. 27 : " The sum of 
judgment was given unto the Son of Man." 

With John x., the Allegory of the Sheepfold, cf. 
1 Enoch lxxxiii. xc, where the Israelites are 
described under the figure of sheep, and God is 
called " the Lord of the sheep " ; Ezek. xxxiv. 

With John viii. 12 : "I am the light of the world ; 
he that followeth Me shall not walk in the darkness, 
but shall have the light of life," cf. 1 Enoch xlviii. 4 : 
" He shall be the light of the Gentiles." 2 

With John xii. 31, xvi. 11 : " The prince of this 

1 Probably the Evangelist's comment. 

2 Deriving, of course, from Isa. xlii. 6. 

30 



THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST 

world," cf. Mart. Isa. ii. 4 : " The angel of law- 
lessness, who is the ruler of this world " (i.e., 
Beliar) . 

In St. John is very evident the dualistic concep- 
tion of the universe, which is characteristic of 
Jewish eschatology (as well as of the later gnostic- 
ism). It is this thought that largely induced the 
conception of a new heaven and earth, because 
" this world lieth in the evil one," and therefore only 
fit to be destroyed ; but Our Lord, while not contra- 
dicting this dualism, regarded it as only temporary, 
and this world as both possible and essentially good. 

With John xiv. 2 : "In My Father's House are 
many mansions" (rnarg., "abiding-places"), c/., 
1 Enoch xxxix. 4 : "I saw another vision, the 
dwelling-places of the holy, and the resting-places 
of the righteous." 

2 Enoch lxi. 2 : "In the great time are many 
mansions prepared for men." 

With John xvi. 8 : " And He, when He is come, 
will convict the world in respect of sin, and of 
righteousness, and of judgment," cf. T. Jud. xx. 5 : 
1 The spirit of truth testifieth all things, and 
accuseth all " ; 1 Enoch i. 9 — 
" And to convict all flesh, 
Of all the works of their ungodliness which 
they have ungodly committed." 

A very remarkable and interesting parallel to 

31 



THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST 

the situation and effect ascribed to Our Lord's 
Passion is found in Ass. Mos. ix. 7, x. 1, where 
Taxo (i.e., Eleazar — 2 Mace. vi. 10) says that his 
and his sons' deaths rather than transgress will 
bring about the promised salvation : " Let us die 
rather than transgress the commands of the Lord 
of Lords, the God of our fathers. For if we do 
this and die, our blood shall be avenged before 
the Lord. And then His kingdom shall appear 
throughout all His creation." 



It should be sufficiently evident by this time how 
deeply lie the roots of Our Lord's eschatological 
teaching in the current literature and conceptions 
of His time and nation. In word and thought, the 
parallels are far too close and too numerous to have 
been accidental. And it is not only in eschatology 
that we notice this. In a number of other passages 
dealing with other subjects we notice similar 
parallelisms. 

The description in Matt. iii. 16 of the opening of 
the heavens, and the appearance of the Holy Spirit 
as a dove, and the voice of God the Father, must 
have come from Our Lord Himself (if it be genuine), 
and with it we must at once compare T. Levi 
xviii. 6, 7— 

" The heavens shall be opened, 
And from the temple of glory shall come upon 

him sanctification, 
With the Father's voice as from Abraham to 
Isaac. 

32 



THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST 

And the glory of the Most High shall be 

uttered over him, 
And the spirit of understanding and sancti- 
fication shall rest upon him." 
T. Jud. xxiv. 2 — 

11 And the heavens shall be opened unto him, 
To pour out the spirit, (even) the blessing of 
the Holy Father. ,, 

With the words "My Beloved Son" (and the 
phrase " The Beloved ,J in Eph. i. 6, cf. Jn. iii. 35, 
x. 17), cf. its frequent recurrence as a technical 
title of the Messiah in the Ascension of Isaiah. 1 

With Matt. iv. 17 : " Repent ye ; for the kingdom 
of heaven is at hand," cf. Ass. Mos. i. 18 : " The day 
of repentance in the visitation wherewith the Lord 
will visit them in the consummation of the end of 
the days." 

Dr. Savage has drawn out in great and interesting 
detail the Jewish character of the Sermon on the 
Mount, in his Gospel of the Kingdom ; but we may 
note one or two of the more striking parallels. 

With Our Lord's going up on to a mountain 2 
we may compare 1 Enoch xxv. 3 : " This high 
mountain, which thou hast seen, whose summit is 
like the throne of God, is His throne, where the 
Holy Great One, the Lord of Glory, the Eternal 

1 For its use, see J. A. Robinson, Ephesians, p. 229; 
Charles, Asc. Isa., p. 3 ; cf. p. 41 below. 

2 Cf. Mt. xvii. 1; Mk. iii. 13. 

33 



THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST 

King, will sit, when He shall come down to visit 
the earth with goodness.' ' 

With Matt. v. 3 : " Blessed are the poor in spirit ; 
for theirs is the kingdom of heaven," cf. T. Jud. 
xxv. 4 : " They who were poor for the Lord's sake 
shall be made rich." (Charles brackets as marginal 
gloss.) 

Sib. iii. 767 : " He will raise up His Kingdom 
for all ages." 

Ass. Mos. x. 1 : " His Kingdom shall appear 
throughout all His Creation." 

With v. 8 : " Blessed are the pure in heart, for 
they shall see God," cf. 4 Ezra vii. 98 : " They are 
hastening to behold the face of Him whom in life 
they served, and from whom they are destined to 
receive their reward in glory " ; Ps. xxiv. 4. 

With v. 9 : " Blessed are the peace-makers, for 
they shall be called the sons of God," cf. 2 Enoch 
lii. 11 : " Blessed is he who implants peace and 
love." 

With v. 11 : "Blessed are ye when men shall 
reproach ye, and persecute you, and say all manner 
of evil against you falsely, for My sake . . . for 
great is your reward in heaven " ; cf. 1 Enoch 
cviii. 10 : " He hath assigned them their recom- 
pense, because they have been found to be such as 
loved heaven more than their life in the world, and 
though they were trodden under foot of wicked 

34 



THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST 

men, and experienced abuse and reviling from them 
and were put to shame, yet they blessed Me." 

With v. 18 : " Till heaven and earth pass away, 
one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass away from 
the law, till all things be accomplished/ ' cf. 2 Bar. 
xix. 1, 2— 

" Wherefore at that time he appointed for them 
a covenant and said: 
1 Behold, I have placed before you life and 

death/ 
And he called heaven and earth to witness 

against them. 
For he knew that his time was but short, 
But that heaven and earth endure always." 

With v. 19 : " Whosoever shall do and teach 
them [the commandments], he shall be called great 
in the kingdom of heaven," 1 cf. T. Levi xiii. 9 : 
" Whosoever teaches noble things and does them, 
shall be enthroned with kings." 

4 Ezra viii. 29 : " Regard them that have 
gloriously taught Thy Law." 

With v. 22 : " Every one that is angry with his 
brother [without cause] shall be in danger of the 
judgment," cf. 2 Enoch xliv. 2 : " He who vents 
anger on any man without injury, the Lord's great 
anger will cut him down, he who spits on the face 
of man reproachfully, will be cut down at the 
Lord's great judgment." 

1 Cf. vii. 24, 26. 

35 



THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST 

With v. 28 : " Every one that looketh on a woman 

to lust after her hath committed adultery already 

with her in his heart," cf. T. Iss. vii. 2 : "I never 

committed fornication by the uplifting of my eyes." 

T. Reub. iii. 10— 

" Pay no heed to the face of a woman, 
Nor associate with another man's wife " ; 
vi. 1— 

" If you wish to be pure in mind, guard your 
senses from every woman " ; 
Prov. vi. 25 ; and T. Benj. viii. 2 — 

" Lust not after her beauty in thine heart ; 
Neither let her take thee with her eyelids." 

With v. 34 : " Swear not at all, neither by the 
heaven, for it is the throne of God ; nor by the 
earth, for it is the footstool of His feet ; nor by 
Jerusalem, for it is the city of the great King. 
Neither shalt thou swear by thy head, for thou 
canst not make one hair white or black. But let 
your speech be yea, yea ; nay, nay," cf. 2 Enoch 
xlix. 1 : "I swear not by any oath, neither by 
heaven nor by earth, nor by any other creature 
which God created." 

" The Lord said : ' There is no oath in Me, nor 
injustice, but truth/ If there is no truth in men, 
let them swear by the words ' yea, yea/ or else, 
nay, nay/ " Isa. lxvi. 1. 

With v. 44 : " Love your enemies, and pray for 
them that persecute you," cf. T. Jos. xviii. 2 : " If 

36 



THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST 

anyone seeketh to do evil unto you, do well unto 
him, and pray for him." 

With vi. 19 : " Lay not up for yourselves treasures 
upon the earth," etc., cf. T. Levi xiii. 5 — 

" Work righteousness, therefore, my children, 
upon the earth, 
That ye may have it as a treasure in heaven." 
2 Bar. xiv. 12 : " They have with Thee a store 
of works preserved in treasuries." 

With vi. 22 : " If thine eye be single," cf. T. Iss. 
iii. 4 : Walking as I did in singleness of eye," and 
T. Dan. ii. 5. 

With vi. 24 : "No man can serve two masters," 
etc., cf. T. Jud. xviii. 6 — 

" He is a slave to two contrary passions, 
And cannot obey God, 
Because they have blinded his soul, 
And he walketh in the day as in the night." 

With vii. 2 : " With what measure ye mete, it 
shall be measured unto you," cf. T. Zeb. v. 3 : 
" Even as a man doeth to his neighbour, even so 
also will the Lord do to him." 

With Matt. x. 28 : " Him which is able to destroy 
both body and soul in hell," cf. 1 Enoch xxii. 13 : 
" Their spirits shall not be slain in the day of 
judgment." 

37 



THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST 

With Matt. xi. 2ff., the question of St. John 
Baptist through his disciples, whether Jesus were the 
Messiah or no, and His reply, x cf. 2 Bar. xxix. 6 : 
" Those who have hungered shall rejoice : moreover, 
also, they shall behold marvels every day " ; and 
4 Ezra xiii. 50 : " And then shall he show them 
very many wonders/' 

With Matt. xi. 29 : " Take My yoke upon you," 
cf. 2 Enoch xxxiv. 1 : " They have rejected . . . 
my yoke " ; and 2 Bar. xli. 3 : " The yoke of 
Thy law." 

With Matt. xii. 35 : " The good man out of his 
good treasure bringeth forth good things : and the 
evil man out of his evil treasure bringeth forth evil 
things," cf. T. Asher i. 9 : " The treasure of the 
inclination is filled with an evil spirit." 

With Matt. xii. 36, 37 : " Every idle word that 
men shall speak, they shall give account thereof in 
the day of judgment. For by thy words thou 
shalt be justified, and by thy words thou shalt be 
condemned," cf. 1 Enoch xcvii. 6 : " All the words 
of your unrighteousness shall be read out before 
the Great Holy One." 

With Matt. xv. 14: "If the blind guide the 
blind, both shall fall into a pit," cf. T. Reub. ii. 9 : 
" Leadeth the youth as a blind man to a pit." 

1 Cf. John vii. 31: " When the Christ shall come, will He 
do more signs than those which this man hath done ? " 

38 



THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST 

With the list of sins given in Matt. xv. 19, cf. 
similar lists in Gal. v. 21 ; Rom. i. 29 ; Wisd. 
xiv. 25 ; T. Reub. iii. 3 ; T. Judah xvi. 1 ; 2 Enoch 
x. 4 ; 3 Bar. iv. 17, viii. 5, xiii. 4. Charles, Pseudep. 
II., p. 528, says that such lists were part of the 
stock-in-trade of Jewish as of all ancient writers. 

With Matt. xvi. 26 : " For what shall a man be 
profited, if he shall gain the whole world and forfeit 
his life ? or what shall a man give in exchange for 
his life ? '" cf. 2 Bar. li. 15— 

" For what then have men lost their life, 
And for what have those who were on the 
earth exchanged their soul ? " 
But the sentiment is not confined to Judaism ; 
see Plat. Rep. 589E, 505B ; Horn. II. 9. 401 ; 
Eurip. Orest. 1156. 

In Matt. xvii. 11 ff., Our Lord accepts the dis- 
ciples' query about the coming of Elijah, and 
declares that St. John Baptist was " Elijah. " 
This return of Elijah was also a current doctrine 
among the Jews, Mai. iv. 5 ; cf. 4 Ezra vi. 26 (see 
note) : " The men who have been taken up, who 
have not tasted death from their birth, shall appear " 
(i.e., Enoch, Gen. v. 24, and Elijah, 2 Kings ii. 11), 
and vii. 28 : " My Son the Messiah shall be revealed 
together with those who are with 11™!/' The same 
acceptance of current doctrine underlies the appear- 
ance of Moses and Elijah at the Transfiguration ; 
and cf. Matt. xvi. 14. 

39 



THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST 

In Matt, xviii. 10, Our Lord lends countenance 
to the doctrine of guardian angels ; cf. 1 Enoch 
c. 5 : " Over all the righteous and holy He will 
appoint guardians from amongst the holy angels." 
Ps. xci. 11. 

With Our Lord's answer to the Scribe about the 
great commandment in the Law : x " Thou shalt 
love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and 
with all thy soul, and with all thy mind . . . Thou 
shalt love thy neighbour as thyself " (quoting 
Deut. vi. 5, Lev. xix. 18), cf. T. Dan. v. 3— 
'" Love the Lord through all your life, 
And one another with a true heart." 
T. Iss. v. 2— 

" Love the Lord and your neighbour." 
vii. 6— 

" I loved the Lord ; 
Likewise also every man with all my heart." 
T. Benj. iii. 3: "Fear ye the Lord, and love 
your neighbour." 

For the influence of the Testaments on Our 
Lord's teaching, see Charles's edition of this work. 

With Our Lord's teaching about humility in 
Matt, xxiii. 1 ff., Lk. xiv. 7, xviii. 9, cf. 4 Ezra 
viii. 48 ff. : "On this account thou shalt be honour- 
able before the Most High ; because thou hast 
humbled thyself, as it becomes thee, and hast not 
assigned thyself a place among the righteous ; and 

1 Matt. xxii. 36 ff. 

40 



THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST 

so thou shalt receive the greater glory/ ' For the 
M woes," cf. Isa. v. 8 ; Hab. ii. 6 ; 1 Enoch xciv. 6 ; 
xcix. 11. 

With Matt. xxvi. 24 : " Good were it for that 
man if he had not been born/' cf. 1 Enoch xxxviii. 2 : 
u It had been good for them if they had not been 
born "; and 2 Enoch xli. 2 ; 4 Ezra iv. 12 ; 2 Bar. 
x. 6. (A not unusual expression.) 

With Mark xii. 40 : " Beware of the Scribes, 
. . . which devour widows' houses, and for a 
pretence make long prayers/' cf. Ass. Mos. vii. 6 : 
" Devourers of the goods of the poor, saying that 
they do so on the ground of their justice, but in 
reality to destroy them, complainers, deceitful, 
concealing themselves lest they should be recog- 
nised/' Zad. Frag. viii. 13 : " And in respect to 
robbing the poor of His people, so that widows 
may be their spoil/' 

The title " Chosen " given to Our Lord by the 
heavenly voice at His Transfiguration, x is found in 
1 Enoch xxxix. 6 : " Mine eyes saw the Elect One 
of righteousness and faith " ; xl. 5 : " The second 
voice I heard blessing the Elect One " ; xlv. 3, 4, 5 : 
" Mine Elect One " ; xlix. 2, 4 ; li. 3, cf. Isa. xlii. 1 : 
" Behold My servant, whom I uphold ; My chosen, 
in whom My soul delighteth " ; Ps. lxxxix. 3 : 
u I have made a covenant with my chosen." See 
p. 33. 

1 Luke ix. 35, cf. xxiii. 35. 

41 



THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST 

With Luke xii. 16 ff. (the parable of the Rich 
Fool), cf. 1 Enoch xcvii 8 ff. — 

" Woe to you who acquire silver and gold in 

unrighteousness and say : 
1 We have become rich with riches and have 

possessions ; 
And have acquired everything we have 

desired. 
And now let us do what we purposed : 
For we have gathered silver, 
And many are the husbandmen in our houses, 
And our granaries are full as with water/ — 
Yea, and like water your lies shall flow away ; 
For your riches shall not abide 
But speedily ascend from you." 

Ecclus. xi. 18 — 

" There is that waxeth rich from self-denial, 
And this is his allotted reward : 
What time he saith : ' I have found rest, 

And now I will enjoy my goods ' — 
He knoweth not what lot shall befall ; 
He shall leave them to others and die." 

Wisd. xv. 8 : " The soul which was lent him 
shall again be demanded." 

But the sentiment is common elsewhere ; cf. 
Job xxvii. 17 ; Ps. xxxix. 6, xlix. 16, lii. 7 ; Eccles. 
ii. 18, 21, v. 10; Jer. xvii. 11 ; Sir. xi. 19; Wisd. 
xv. 8 ; Hor. Od. ii. 3. 17. 

With Luke xiv. 5 : " Which of you shall have 
an ass or an ox fallen into a well, and will not 
straightway draw him up on the Sabbath Day?" 

42 



THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST 

cf. Zad. Frag. xiii. 23 : " And if it fall into a pit 
or ditch, he shall not raise it on the Sabbath." 

With Luke xv. 10 : " There is joy in the presence 
of the angels of God over one sinner that repenteth," 
cf. 1 Enoch li. 4 : " The faces of all the angels in 
heaven shall be lighted up with joy " ; 2 Bar. 
lxvii. 2 : " Dost thou think that there is no anguish 
to the angels in the presence of the Mighty One ? " 

One of the most striking of all the parallels is 

that between Luke xvii. 2, Our Lord's teaching on 

forgiveness, 1 and T. Gad. vi. 3, 7 : " Love ye one 

another from the heart ; and if a man sin against 

thee, speak peaceably to him, and in thy soul 

hold not guile ; and if he repent and confess, 

forgive him. . . . And if he be shameless and 

persist in his wrong-doing, even so forgive him 

from the heart, and leave to God the avenging.' ' 

Cf. Ecclus. xxviii. 2 — 

" Forgive thy neighbour the injury done to thee, 

And then, when thou prayest, thy sins shall 

be forgiven." 

With Luke xviii. 7 : " Shall not God avenge His 
elect, which cry to him day and night, and He is 
long-suffering over them ? I say unto you, that 
He will avenge them speedily. Howbeit, when the 
Son of Man cometh, shall He find faith on the 
earth ? " cf. 1 Enoch xlvii. 1, 2— 

1 Cf. Matt, xviii. 21. 

43 



i 



THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST 

" And in those days shall have ascended the 

prayer of the righteous, 
And the blood of the righteous from the 

earth before the Lord of spirits. x 
In those days the holy ones who dwell above 

in the heavens 
Shall unite with one voice 
And supplicate and pray 
On behalf of the blood of the righteous which 

has been shed, 
And that the prayer of the righteous may 

not be in vain before the Lord of Spirits, 
That judgment may be done unto them, 
And that they may not have to suffer for 

ever/' 
Sir. xxxv. 12 ff. 
4 Ezra v. 1 : " The land shall be barren of faith." 

With Luke xix. 44 : " The time of thy visitation," 
cf. Ass. Mos. i. 18 : " The day of repentance in the 
visitation wherewith the Lord will visit them in 
the consummation of the end of the days." 

With Luke xxii. 27 : "I am among you as he 
that serveth," cf. T. Jos. xvii. 8 : " I was among 
them as one of the least." 

With Luke xxii. 31 : " Satan asked to have you, 
that he might sift you as wheat, but I made suppli- 
cation for thee, that thy faith fail not," cf. T. Benj. 

1 Cf. Matt, xxiii. 35 : " All the righteous blood shed 
on the earth." 

44 



THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST 

iii. 3 : " Even though the spirits of Beliar claim 
you to afflict you with every evil, yet shall they 
not have dominion over you." Job i. 6ff. 

With John iv. 14, vii. 37 : " Whosoever drinketh 
of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst ; 
but the water that I shall give him shall become in 
him a well of water springing up unto eternal 
life. ... If any man thirst, let him come unto 
Me, and drink. He that believeth on Me, as the 
Scripture hath said, out of his belly shall flow 
rivers of living water," cf. 1 Enoch xlii. 3, xlviii. 1, 
where wisdom is compared to rain and dew and an 
inexhaustible fountain, which is also a fountain of 
righteousness ; Isa. xii. 3 : " With joy shall ye 
draw water out of the wells of salvation " ; lv. 1 : 
M Ho ! every one that thirsteth, come ye to the 
waters." 

With John v. 41 : "I receive not glory from 
men," cf. T. Benj. vi. 4: "The good inclination 
receiveth not glory nor dishonour from men." 

In John viii. 58, Our Lord asserts His 
pre-existence : cf. 1 Enoch xlviii. 3 — 

1 Yea, before the sun and the signs were created, 
Before the stars of the heaven were made, 
His name (i.e., the Son of Man) was named 
before the Lord of Spirits." 

With John x. 12 : "He that is a hireling, and 
not a shepherd, whose own the sheep are not, 

45 



THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST 

beholdeth the wolf coming, and leaveth the sheep, 
and fleeth," cf. 4 Ezra v. 18 : "Do not desert us 
as a shepherd does who leaves his flock in the 
power of noxious wolves " ; Ezek. xxxiv. 

With John xiv. 23 : " We will come unto him 
and make our abode with him " ; xvii. 22 : " That 
they may be one, even as We are one ; I in them 
and Thou in Me, that they may be perfected into 
one," cf. 1 Enoch cv. 2 : "I and My Son will be 
united with them for ever " ; Isa. vii. 14, viii. 8, 10 : 
the name and meaning of Immanuel, " With us is 
God." 

With John xvi. 21 : "A woman when she is in 
travail hath sorrow," cf. 1 Enoch lxii. 4 : " Then 
shall pain come upon them as on a woman in 
travail" (and, of course, Isa. xiii. 8, xxvi. 17; 
Ps. xlviii. 6 ; etc.). 

With John xvii. 3 : " This is life eternal, that 
they should know Thee, the only true God," cf. 
Wisd. xv. 3— 

" To know Thee is perfect righteousness, 

Yea, to know Thy dominion is the root of 

immortality." 

Dr. Charles has noted some interesting parallels, 

also, with the Story of Ahikar, a tale found in the 

Arabian Nights and elsewhere, of which a fifth 

century B.C. MS. was discovered at Elephantine in 

1906-8. He compares Matt. xxiv. 18, Lk. xii. 43, 

with iv. 14, an account of the ill-treatment of 

46 



THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST 

menservants and maidservants ; the words of the 
Prodigal Son with viii. 34 : " Forgive me this my 
folly ; and I will tend thy horses and feed thy pigs 
which are in thy house " ; viii. 24 : " Father, I have 
sinned against thee. Forgive me, and I will be 
a slave unto thee henceforth and for ever." 

Luke xiii. 6, with a similar parable of an unfruitful 
tree in viii. 35. 



47 



CHAPTER II 

Considerable attention has been given to the 
parallels to Our Lord's eschatological teaching 
found in the Jewish Pseudepigrapha, and quotations 
have been given fully, because these are of unusual 
interest, and in order to emphasise, what is not 
always realised, the essentially Jewish character of 
Our Lord's teaching. His Personality, and the 
impression which it has made on mankind, and 
the growth and activities of the Christian Church, 
have been so unique and so remarkable, that men 
have tended to look upon His teaching as something 
altogether new and unique. They have allowed 
that much of it was based upon the Old Testament, 
but ignorance of the current teaching and ideas of 
His own times has prevented men from realising 
how much He was a " child of His own age " ; 
and, consequently, much of His teaching has been 
wrongly regarded as unique and original, and has 
thereby been invested with an authority which is 
hardly warranted. * Not that Our Lord's teaching 
is not unique, or that it shows no improvement 
or advance on current Judaism ; because in various 
ways it both differs from what was held and believed 
by the men of His own time, and also raises and 
spiritualises it. To take one example alone, there 
is a saying of the Rabbis, " Do not unto others 

1 Cf. Schweitzer, p. 222. 

48 



THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST 

what ye would not that they should do unto you " ; * 
and what a contrast is here between their negative 
and Christ's positive precept : " All things what- 
soever ye would that men should do unto you, even 
so do ye also unto them M ! Other examples may 
be noted in Savage, Gospel of the Kingdom, and 
Edersheim has emphasised the same contrast at 
some length. 2 

But, after allowing for the contrast and the 
advance made by Christ on the teaching of His 
own age, we must acknowledge that both His 
language and His conceptions were rooted and 
grounded in Judaism, a fact which Dr. Sanday, 3 
considers proved by the eschatological attitude of 
the early Church. 4 Dr. Winstanley considers that 
the eschatological element was original in Our 
Lord's mouth. 5 It is not intended that His words 
are actual quotations ; they are not, for several of 
the books referred to above are of a later date ; 
but His familiarity with and dependence upon 
these writings are only too obvious, a fact which 
Muirhead hardly seems to allow sufficiently. 6 And 

1 Cf. Tobit iv. 15. 

2 Life and Times, I, p. 531 ff. 

3 P. 112. 

4 Cf. Kennedy, p. 96; Winstanley, p. 383. 

5 P. 380. 

6 Cf. Burkitt: " In saying this [that the background 
of Enoch shows the Synoptists in their true perspective] 
I have no intention of detracting from the importance of 
what the Gospels report to us. On the contrary, it puts 
familiar words into their proper setting. . . . Some of 
the best-known sayings of Jesus only appear in their true 
light if regarded as Midrash upon words and concepts 

49 



THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST 

the later date of many of the parallels does not 
invalidate them, or imply that they are echoes of 
Our Lord's teaching ; because literary use of any 
terminology always presupposes previous popular 
use, sometimes over a lengthy period. It should 
be borne in mind, also, that questions as to the 
literary provenance of the Gospel narratives do not 
affect the question at issue. There is undoubtedly 
more eschatology in St. Matthew (the Jewish 
Gospel), but there is sufficient in all four to sub- 
stantiate the assertion that Our Lord used both 
the ideas and the language of His day, and no 
theories, correct or incorrect, about the mutual 
dependence or origin of the Gospels materially 
affect it. And could it have been otherwise ? 
To some minds it may seem derogatory to the 
Son of God that so much of His teaching should be 
shown to have been borrowed, that He should be 
called a " child of His own age " ; but is not this a 
necessary corollary from the Incarnation, a part of 
the " self-humiliation " to which He submitted ? 
If it be granted that He was Perfect Man, could He 
have been anything else than a " child of His own 
age " ? And if he were to share human life at a 
definite time and in a certain place and among 
certain men, must He not have accepted the 
limitations and the details of current thought, as 
well as those of current manner and custom, polity 

taken from Enoch, words and concepts that were familiar 
to those who heard the Prophet of Galilee, though now 
they have been forgotten by Jew and Christian alike." — 
P. 21. 

50 



THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST 

and geography and civilisation ? If he were to 
teach men, must He not use the intellectual and 
theological counters with which they were familiar ? x 
Had He used these and not improved on them we 
might well have queried His uniqueness and au- 
thority ; but the differences between the two go to 
corroborate the other evidence that He was Perfect 
God as well as Perfect Man. And if we are able 
to distinguish between the husk and kernel of His 
teaching, it will help us considerably to accept His 
authority. We shall not feel obliged necessarily to 
accept as matters de fide such statements as are 
made by the writers of Advent Hymns already 
alluded to ; and we shall feel that the progress 
both demanded and experienced by the human 
race is not precluded by any dogmatic dicta of His. 
In other words, we shall be able to both thankfully 
realise and confidently assert that while He was 
child of His own age, He is also child of every age, 
not only Son of Mary, but also Son of Man. 2 

1 Cf. MacNeile, St. Matt., p. xxvi. 

2 The fact that eschatology is so prominent in all the 
New Testament writers, who were men of very varied 
capacities and experience, not only goes to show that it 
was an essential element in Our Lord's teaching, but also 
that it contained an element of essential truth. And it 
should be remembered that no amount of excision of texts 
in the Synoptists, as being not original and as belonging 
to a later recension of the original text, and no amount of 
destructive criticism of the Fourth Gospel, can affect the 
question at issue. These books are saturated with escha- 
tology; and even if this be largely due to the mind of the 
Church of the earliest days, it represents what the first 
disciples taught; and they would not have taught anything 

51 



THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST 

Yet it cannot be too confidently asserted, or the 
caution too carefully emphasised, that Our Lord's 
thoughts were not solely grounded in Jewish 
Eschatology. Terry * prints references to show how 
practically the whole of the central passage, Mk. 
xiii. and parallels, is expressed in the phraseology 
of the Old Testament ; and it only need a reference 
Bible and patient working out to show how both 
Our Lord and the Jewish writers drew from the 
Old Testament. 2 It is this fact that goes to sub- 
stantiate the assertion that Apocalypse is the 
successor of Prophecy ; and in the Old Testament 
we can trace the mingling of eschatological elements 
in the prophetical writings, and the gradual develop- 
ment of the one into the other. And it is most 
significant, and a material guide in our estimate 
of the value of the apocalyptic writings, that the 
judgment of both the Jewish authorities and the 
Christian Church reduced the apocalyptic element 
in their canons of Scripture to a minimum. Nor 
will the casual reader question this decision. The 
apocalyptic writings, as may be seen partly from 
quotations already given, stand on a very different 
level to the Old Testament ; they are poor and 
tasteless for the most part, and wander off on to 

as part of Christ's teaching for which they had not His 
authority and example. The doctrine was there in germ, 
and it developed as their experience grew. {Cf. Foundations, 
Essay iv; Rashdall, Conscience and Christ, Lect. V, p. 167.) 

1 P. 239. 

2 Dalman and Muirhead rightly call attention to this, 
and show how much Our Lord's teaching derives from 
Daniel; cf. Sanday, Hibbert Journal, Oct., 1911, p. 84. 

52 



THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST 

side-issues and non-essentials ; the gold is mixed 
with so much dross. Indeed, the details of them do 
much to detract from their splendid faith and 
courage, and the spiritual element is obscured and 
tainted with much that is gross and unworthy, x 
and the resemblances between them and Our Lord's 
teaching do not necessarily imply actual dependence 
and quotation and approval, only that He used the 
general conceptions common to the subject. 2 

It is sufficiently clear from the passages already 
quoted, that Jewish eschatology centres round 
certain well-defined conceptions. Born of adversity 
and disappointment, and despair of ever seeing the 
hope of Israel realised on this material plane, it 
placed the scene of the consummation only too 
devoutly wished, further and further into the 
future. The early prophets had painted in glowing 
colours the future of the nation, as a world-empire 
under one of the Davidic line ; but the Captivities 
belied them. A later generation pictured the return 
of the Exiles to Zion, and the restoration of the 
Davidic kingdom, with the Gentile races tributary 
and submissive ; but only a few of the Exiles ever 
did return, and their fortunes were anything but 
encouraging. Contact with other peoples and with 
world-movements widened the horizon of Jewish 
thought and outlook ; and experience of suffering 
deepened and purified their conceptions ; holiness 

1 See pp. 87 [ff. 

2 Cf. Burkitt, p. 23. 

53 



THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST 

and righteousness took the place of physical descent 
and a legal covenant-relation. So that nationalism 
gave place to a humanism, and legal conceptions 
to moral, and material to spiritual. All men were 
regarded as within the sphere of God's love ; the 
distinction between them was one of character, not 
of blood ; and the sphere of God's operation was 
in the things of the spirit, not of matter ; this world 
was too gross and too evil for the realisation of 
God's promises ; it would, therefore, be entirely 
renewed, or superseded. 

A study of Jewish Eschatology reveals a wide 
variation and disagreement between the various 
writers and the various periods in their notions of 
the last times. x Thus, the present time is viewed 
as passing and temporary ; what is to be is deter- 
mined in the fore-knowledge and counsel of God ; 
and this will be realised when the age is consum- 
mated. The form that the realisation will take is 
conceived as a kingdom, and the King is to be 
either God's Son or special messenger, called His 
Messiah (i.e., anointed, Christ), whose kingdom is 
in some cases temporary, and in some permanent. 
It will be inaugurated by a resurrection, sometimes 
of all men, sometimes only of the righteous ; and 
this will be followed by a judgment, presided over 
by this Messiah, called Son of Man, assisted by 
angels. The Israelites' and Gentiles' respective 
fates also vary ; with some writers all Israel shall 
be saved and all Gentiles punished ; with others, 

1 Cf. Charles, Eschatology, p. 366. 

54 



THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST 

the righteous only of either will be saved, and the 
wicked of both punished. The scene varies between 
a renewed heaven and earth, and heaven itself. x 

In estimating the value of the forms of the apoca- 
lyptic writings, due allowance must be made for 
this variation (i.e., there was no one authoritative 
form of teaching about the future as regarded its 
details ; the writers were convinced that God was 
good and that His will and the right would 
ultimately prevail, but their notions as to how and 
when and where the end would come varied with 
their experiences and with their own temperaments 
and intellectual equipments). No appeal can be 
made to the form of any one apocalyptic writing as 
authoritative above the rest ; we can only note the 
principles which they endeavoured to uphold, and 
the development which may be traced in their teach- 
ing. And we must note, also, the dilemma that the 
writers were placed in, by their having to treat of 
transcendentals, with only material concepts at 
their disposal in which to express them, and by 
their having to be " popular " and understanded 
of the people ; (for Apocalypse was not academic or 
esoteric merely ; it was intensely practical, and 
aimed at meeting a very pressing need, the support 
of men's faith in dark days). Philosophical abstrac- 
tions would have meant nothing and availed nothing 
for the " men in the street " ; they could only 
understand things with which they were already 
familiar. 2 

1 C/., the author's Cradle of Christianity, pp. 55 f£. 

2 Cf. Tyrrell, op. cit., p. 137. 

55 



THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST 

Hence, the triumph of right over wrong was 
expressed in the form of earthly kingship, with 
God or His Chosen for King ; divinity was expressed 
by alarming portents, by a visible appearance from 
the material heavens, and an audible trumpet 
summons ; resurrection was in some cases of body 
as well as of spirit (for how can the popular mind 
conceive of existence apart from the body ?) ; 
judgment was conceived under the form of a 
" Great Assize, " with all the paraphernalia of a 
legal court, the books, the attendants, the guilty 
prisoners, the verdict, and so forth ; punishment 
was expressed in terms of bodily suffering and 
physical corruption, fire, frost, torment, pain, thirst, 
darkness, chains, worms (i.e., on the analogy of 
earthly prisons and the Valley of Hinnom), and by 
remorse ; and the future joys expressed in terms 
of familiar earthly bliss, gardens, sunshine, rest, 
banquets, power, freedom, and so forth, on an 
extended scale, and freed from the limitations at 
present experienced by men. x 

This dilemma was very real, and it has been 
through failure to appreciate it and through unin- 
telligent conceptions of reality, that men have gone 
astray and landed themselves and others in diffi- 
culties and absurdities in their interpretation of 
eschatology. Concepts must be taken for what 
they attempt to express, not for what they actually 
say ; and the same principle must be followed in 
estimating Our Lord's teaching (i.e., it must be 
recognised and allowed for that He spoke primarily 

1 Cf. Kennedy, pp. 19, 26, 36, 42. 

56 



THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST 

as a first-century Jew to first-century Jews, and 
used the words and thoughts of His own age through 
which to convey the eternal truths that formed 
His message and revelation to humanity ; it is not 
His actual language and expressions that matter 
so much, as the thoughts and truths of which they 
are the medium. It is these latter which we need 
to discover, and we do so by comparison with other 
places where similar expressions are used, and not 
least by comparison with other portions of His 
teaching where these expressions do not occur, and 
by noting the general characteristics of His teach- 
ing. 1 Dr. Burkitt, in his preface to Schweitzer, 
p. vii., has some good words about the permanent 
value of Apocalypse : " It may well be that absolute 
truth cannot be embodied in human thought, and 
that its expression must be always clothed in 
symbols. It may be that we have to translate 
the hopes and fears of our spiritual ancestors into 
the language of our new world. We have to learn, 
as the Church in the Second Century had to learn, 
that the End is not yet, that New Jerusalem, like 
all other objects of sense, is an image of the truth 
rather than the truth itself. But at least we are 
beginning to see that the Apocalyptic vision, the 
New Age which God is to bring in, is no mere 
embroidery of Christianity, but the heart of its 
enthusiasm. The Apocalyptic conceptions are not 
1 regrettable accretions foisted on by superstition 
to the pure morality of the original Gospel/ These 
ideas are the Christian Hope, to be allegorised and 

1 See below, p. 140 ; and cf. Winstanley, pp. 362 ff. 

57 



THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST 

1 spiritualised ' by us for our own use whenever 
necessary, but not to be given up so long as we 
remain Christians at all." Or. again, cf. Porter, 
p. 72 : " It remains true that the sense of the 
reality of eternal things is inseparable from the 
belief in their future manifestation and evident 
dominion. In other words, eschatology has its 
essential worth in religious faith. Religious history 
supplies abundant proof how constantly eschatology 
furnishes the motive that gives faith its victory 
over the world, and truth and justice their kingship 
over the heart." 1 

Let us look again at some of the central passages 
and terms of Our Lord's eschatology, and see what 
estimate we can form of them, in the light thrown 
on them by the Jewish writings. They are mostly 
to be found in St. Matthew's Gospel, which is 
natural in a book showing so many other Jewish 
characteristics ; a book written by a Jew for Jews 
would give a large place to Our Lord's eschatological 
teaching. 

The chief terms and phrases of an eschatological 
character in Our Lord's mouth are these : Son of 
Man, Kingdom, Consummation of the Age, Judg- 
ment, Last Day, Coming, Eternal Life. Let us 
glance at these. 2 

" Son of Man." This has been the subject of 

1 Cf. below, p. 140. 

2 See also below, pp. 125 ff.; and Sanday, Hibbert Journal, 
Oct., 1911, pp. 100 ff. The leading thoughts of Jewish 
Eschatology are well summarised by Schiirer, II. 2, pp. 
154 n\, and Oesterley, pp. 61, 124. 

58 



THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST 

great and prolonged controversy, chiefly as to what 
the phrase represented in the current Aramaic, 
what it meant to the hearers, and what Our Lord 
intended by it. Undoubtedly, it derives from 
Dan. vii. and reappears in Enoch, and bears a 
Messianic colouring. 

In Daniel it is used of a supernatural personage 
who appears " with the clouds of heaven," is 
brought " unto the Ancient of Days," and is given 
a kingdom which is universal, perpetual, and 
indestructible. This kingdom is the kingdom of 
God, and is given to " the Saints of the Most 
High " ; so that the " Son of Man " is hardly more 
than a symbol of the saints (i.e., Israel). The title 
is not distinctive ; he is " one like unto a son 
of man." 

By the time of Enoch, the concept has crystallised, 
and represents a definite individual. It is note- 
worthy that in xlvi. 1, where he first appears, he is 
" like one of the holy angels," as well as having 
" appearance of a man," and bearing the title Son 
of Man. Moreover, with him " dwelleth righteous- 
ness," and he " revealeth all the treasures of that 
which is hidden. Because the Lord of Spirits hath 
chosen him, and whose lot hath the pre-eminence 
before the Lord of Spirits in uprightness for ever." 
He is to judge the world. That is to say, already 
the concept is rising to the higher plane, and ethical 
and spiritual qualities are entering it, and a stage 
towards super-humanity is reached. 

Similarly, in 4 Ezra xiii., the man flies with the 
clouds of heaven ; all tremble at his presence, and 

59 



THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST 

all who hear his voice melt away. He cuts out a 
mountain (the "great stone " of Dan. ii. 45), but 
no place can be seen whence it is taken. His 
weapons with which he conquers his enemies are 
fire and storm and the breath of his mouth (i.e., 
semi-non-material things. Again, the concept is 
supra-mundane, idealistic. 

By the time of Our Lord it denotes a super- 
natural being ; b»ut He, in reviving its use, brought 
back into it the notion of humanity ; so that both 
notions were implied side by side, humanity with 
its attendant ills and limitations and humility, 1 
super-humanity with its transcendence, its dignity, 
and its power. In His day it was not a recognised 
title of the Messiah, 2 so that His use of it " pur- 
posely furnished them with a problem which 
stimulated reflection about His person, and gave 
such a tendency to this reflection that the solution 
of the problem fully revealed the mystery of the 
personality of Jesus." 3 

1 See the refs. quoted by Oesterley, p. 158. 

2 Cf. John xii. 34. 

3 Dalman, p. 259; cf. Sanday, p. 126: "A great part of 
the time when He spoke of the Son of Man, His hearers 
probably did not understand that He was speaking of 
Himself " ; and Dewick, p. 161. Driver, in Hastings D B, 
iv., p. 586: |" The title . . . did not suggest to those who 
heard it Messianic associations, until it came to be con- 
nected with predictions of the Second Advent; it thus did 
not reveal, but veil, His Messiahship. . . . By His adoption 
of it, He found a means, on the one hand, of not denying 
even in public His consciousness of His unique mission, and, 
on the other hand, of lending no countenance to the crude 
and illusory hopes which attached to popular ideas of the 
Messiah." 

60 



THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST 

There is little doubt that He used it of Himself, 
and with a Messianic import ; so that all passages 
in which it occurs may be taken as referring to Him. 
But the point to notice here is that it bears a 
supra-human, supra-material, idealistic colour, even 
if He emphasised the human aspect. 

In just the same way was the concept of the 
Kingdom spiritualised. Originally, it goes back to 
1 Sam. xii. 12, x and the quite early thought of 
Jehovah as the King and Overlord of His people. 
The Old Testament use naturally varies, and in 
several of the writers (prophetical) it intends a 
world-empire, with the Gentile races subsidiary and 
tributary to Israel, and Jerusalem the metropolis 
and centre of all, of which Isa. ii. 2-4 may be taken 
as typical. Even if worship and the recognition of 
God be its supreme aim, its sphere is this earth ; 
and the sufferings and restrictions of the Exile 
rather enhanced the ideal than dimmed it. 2 The 
Maccabean age still further upheld it, and it was 
not until the first century B.C. that Jewish writers 
despaired of this earth, and placed the scene of the 
kingdom in a new heaven and earth. 

But it is necessary to notice that the mere fact 
that the " kingdom " was a " Kingdom of God," 
that God was the King (or His representative), at 
once stamped the concept with an other-worldly 
character ; so that the ideal of Israel as a theocracy 
was present from the first, even if its scope was in 



1 Cf. Judg. viii. 23. 

2 Cf. Isa. xl.-lxvi. 



61 



THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST 

this world. And the Old Testament leaves no 
doubt that the Kingdom of God was to be of both 
a moral and a spiritual character. The very 
exalted and ethically beautiful descriptions of the 
Messianic King in Isa. xi. and xxxii., with their 
emphasis on righteousness and equity, the seven 
gifts of the Spirit of Jehovah, and the knowledge of 
Jehovah, show how far removed beyond and above 
the thought of mere earthly power were the pioneers 
of Jewish religious belief. x 

No less spiritual was the teaching of the apoca- 
lyptists. Emphasis on ethical values is a marked 
feature of the Testaments ; the " consummation of 
the end of the days " is to be preceded by a " day 
of repentance"; 2 the issue of the Resurrection 
turns more and more on the question of righteous- 
ness ; it is the righteous who attain to it, or receive a 
better reward, rather than the " Israelites after 
the flesh " ; when the kingdom appears, Satan 
shall be no more, and sorrow shall depart with 
him. 3 

And this ethical and spiritual side of the concept 
has been allowed in our popular use to fall almost 
entirely into the background. It is partly that the 
current popular notion of the kingdom in the New 
Testament was sensuous and this-worldly ; and 
partly that the word " kingdom " with us is used 
mainly to denote the sphere of a king's rule, the 
territory and the people over whom he rules ; and 

1 Cf. Riehm, p. 89. 

2 Ass. Mos. i. 17. 

3 Ass. Mos. x. 1; cf. Drummond, p. 323. 

62 



THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST 

partly that we have accepted these easy interpreta- 
tions and have not troubled ourselves to enquire 
whether Biblical use justifies them or otherwise. 
We are not bound to pay overmuch attention to 
philological considerations (though they may not, 
indeed, be neglected) ; but in this case they might 
have saved us a bad error. For the Greek ftaaikeia 
and the Hebrew mate are both abstract terms, 
denoting the principle or fact of ruling rather than 
the thing ruled ; this latter meaning is secondary. 
Cremer gives the order of meanings as : power, 
form, and sphere of government. So that " sov- 
ereignty " would be a better word to use ; or, 
better still, " kingship/' as connoting the fact that 
God possesses the supreme authority, and exercises 
it among men, and that they acknowledge it and 
willingly own and serve Him as King. 1 Of this, 
Wisd. xv. 3 is a good illustration : "To know Thee 
is perfect righteousness, yea, to know Thy dominion 
is the root of immortality/ ' 

We must beware, then, of reading any spatial 
or local meaning into this very deep and compre- 
hensive concept. Such use, says Dalman, is rare 
in the Old Testament and never occurs in the later 
Jewish literature ; and in the teaching of Jesus it 
means the life of the future age. (Cremer also 
identifies it with salvation.) " We may assume 
that He borrowed the term ... as an eschatological 
designation from the Book of Daniel, and that He 

1 See Dalman, pp. 91-94, 134; Robertson, p. 58 ; 
MacNeile, St Matt., p. xix; Hast. D.B. ii, pp. 619, 844. 

63 



THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST 

used it by preference for the reason that regard for 
the honour of God took precedence in His view of 
all else, and also because He considered it certain 
that the chief end of mankind was to find their 
salvation in the most intimate relation to God, and 
in full obedience to His will. He was further 
convinced that the purpose of God was directed 
principally to the bestowal of blessing on men, and 
not to the mere exaltation of the divine majesty 
over the world. Hence, in His view, the completed 
establishment of God as sovereign implied, for those 
who experienced it, absolute happiness/ ' x 

It will naturally include the " subject-matter " 
of the kingdom — the reign must have its realm. 
The kingdom of heaven was " essentially the com- 
munity in which the divine will was to be realised on 
earth as it is already in heaven. . . . " 2 " The 
kingdom of God ... is throughout conceived by 
Our Lord as a social organism." 3 But the original 
and leading idea is theoretical and abstract, and 
refers to the essence of kingship, rather than to the 
objective means of its expression and exercise. 
Dr. Robertson's words are here to the point : "By 
the words ' kingdom of God/ then, Our Lord 
denotes not so much His disciples ... as something 
which they receive, a state upon which they enter. 

1 P. 136. 

2 Charles, Eschatol, p. 370, cf. 83 ff., as against Dalman's 
purely abstract notion; cf. Dr. Abbott's preference for the 
idea of " family relations/' Fourfold Gospel, III, pp. 177, 
424 ff. 

3 Von Hugel, p. 62. 

64 



THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST 

For its ultimate fulfilment the term indicates an 
order of things final and absolute, in which God is 
all in all. But the kingdom of God is also spoken 
of in another sense, descriptive of the order of 
events, the sum total of the methods and processes 
which, under the guidance and rule of God, go 
to bring about that final state of Perfection." x 
This rule is, of course, a moral and spiritual, as 
well as physical control ; hence, " the reign of 
Christ signifies the reign of ethical purity and true 
religion, the establishment of moral order." 2 Dr. 
Sanday quotes Dr. Hort as saying that " the 
kingdom of God is : ' the world of invisible laws 
by which God is ruling and blessing His creatures ' " 3 
and cf. his own words : " What is the essential 
meaning of the Kingdom of God ? Is it not the 
asserted and realised sovereignty of God, Divine 
influence, and Divine power felt as energising in the 
souls of men ? " ; 4 and " The reign of Divine Love 
exercised by God in His grace over human hearts 
believing in His love." 5 Walpole emphasises the 
presence of the Kingdom, but notes the incomplete- 
ness of the Church and the distinction between 
the two. 6 The Church is a "home in which the 
mysteries of the Kingdom of Heaven may be learned. 
She is a school in which the children of the kingdom 

1 P. 86. 

2 Toy, p. 377. 

3 In Hast, ii, p. 6196. 

4 Recent Research, p. 115. 

5 Bruce. 

6 Kingdom of Heaven, Ch. II. 

65 



THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST 

may be trained. She is a spiritual hospital in which 
the healing powers of the Kingdom of Heaven may 
be felt. She is, further, a state and kingdom in 
which the social principles of the kingdom may 
be manifested." 1 " Le royaume des cieux est 
proprement le regne ou la royaute de Dieu, Tere 
Messianique." * It should be further noted that 
the kingdom is in all cases regarded as a gift from 
God. 

That the kingdom was taught, both by Christ 
and His Apostles, as in a measure and sense at 
least as already present and operative, is shown 
below (pp. 90 ff.). 

" Consummation of the Age." Much trouble 
would have been saved if the A.V. expression " end 
of the world " had been avoided. The latter gives 
to nine people out of ten the thought of a catas- 
trophic termination of the world-order, of the 
physical universe ; a thought entirely foreign to 
the original. It is noticeable that in Matt. xiii. 38, 
the word /cooy^o? is rightly used to denote the sphere 
of activity, in distinction to accov used of time. 
There the reference is to the well-known Jewish 
concept of " This age " or " epoch/' and " the age 
to come/' a contrast of the present state of affairs 
and the days of the Messiah. " Consummation *' 
rightly translates avvrekeia as the accomplishing of 
a process, not its sudden termination ; the end, 
indeed, may come suddenly, but it is led up to by 

1 P. 45. 

2 Loisy, Evangiles Syn. t p. 229n. 

66 



THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST 

many contributary causes ; and it is the develop- 
ment and result of these that is intended by the 
word " consummation." 1 

The contrast of the two ages occurs in 4 Ezra 
viii. 1 : " This age the Most High has made for 
many, but the age to come for few " ; but the 
thought is similar to the Stoic concept of the 
" mighty aeon," which occurs in Sib. iii. 92. It is 
a very natural contrast between the actual and 
ideal, the unrealised hope and its fulfilment, the 
unsatisfying present and the faith for the future. 

Parallel to this use of age is its adjective, accovcos, 
translated sometimes " everlasting," but better, 
"eternal." It implies the qualities belonging to the 
ideal age ; and its commonest use is the phrase 
u eternal life," although we find " eternal sin " ; 2 
" eternal punishment, fire " ; 3 " eternal God " 4 ; 
"eternal judgment," 5 etc. 

Whatever meaning is given by the Jewish and 
New Testament writers to the phrase " Kingdom 
of God " will, therefore, attach to the phrases, 
"the age, eternal"; for the hope and ideal of 
Judaism found its expression and description in 
various forms and similes. We need not, in conse- 
quence, spend further time on its content. But 
the derivation of the word needs a few lines. This 
is uncertain, but the lexicographers are unanimous 

1 See below, p. 125. 

2 Mk. iii. 29. 

3 Matt, xviii. 8, xxv. 46. 

4 Rom. xvi. 26. 

5 Heb. vi. 13. 

67 



THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST 

in connecting it with the thought of life, and the 
span of life ; and the same meaning is given in the 
Hebrew q^;, which is its Old Testament counter- 
part. 1 Consequently, the thought of time is 
wrapped up with it ; and as human life and all 
good things familiar to man have an ending, the 
thought of never-endingness attached itself to the 
thought of perfection, of ideality ; so that ollcov = 
life, first a definite space of time, and then its 
infinite course (Cremer) ; cucbvios = " perpetuus/' 
constant, abiding, not transitory. " In general, the 
word depicts that of which the horizon is not in 
view, whether the horizon be at an infinite distance 
— or whether it lies no further than the span of a 
Caesar's life/' 2 

It is most necessary that this time-element 
should be recognised, in order that it may receive 
its proper valuation ; but a just estimate of both 
Jewish and New Testament conceptions of the 
" Kingdom " will cause us to place this time- 
element far in the background, and regard it as 
an unessential and misleading element in the 
notion of perfection, due to the natural inability 
of the writers to entirely eliminate time from their 
thoughts, and to the equally natural claim that 



1 Cf. E. Bibl. 1147. 

2 Moulton & Milligan, cf. Pusey, pp. 38 ff.; Liddon, 
Clerical Life and Work, p. 136; Dahle, p. 437; T. W. Fowle, 
Essay on km and cliooplos," (1877); Rashdall, op. cit. t p. 297; 
Gayford, The Future State, p. 95 ; Hastings, D C G, i, 
pp. 787, 788. 

68 



THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST 

what is ideal shall be indestructible and permanent. 
The one writer who comes nearest to the ideal 
conception, St. John, cannot avoid using the 
current terms : but, as Dr. Kennedy says, for St. 
John dicbvLos " means primarily that which belongs 
to the Coming Aeon, the higher order of things, 
and thus is virtually equivalent to 'supra-earthly/ ,J 
(C/. Dalman, p. 148 : " The idea of the sovereignty 
of God filled the place of that of the future age. 
The correlative of ' this age ' is properly not ' that 
aeon ' — but eternal life.") 1 

So that, arguing from the use of dccov and cilcdvlos, 
we may safely say that the time-element must be 
abandoned, in favour of that which M time-lessness " 
was intended to represent. The true meaning will 
be perfection, ideality, genuineness, reality ; a 
meaning which is enforced by the use in such 
passages as Isa. xl. 28, Mk. iii. 29, Matt, xviii. 8, 
xxv. 46, etc., which implies " intensity " (i.e., 
quality rather than quantity, forcefulness rather 
than duration) 2 . " Eternal life " is thus truly 
described by St. Paul as "life indeed, fjovrmfari .* 

The term " Last Day " need not detain us, for 
it is clearly an offshoot of the preceding. (It is 

1 And we would enter a strong plea that both our 
Prayer Book Revisers and all teachers and preachers will 
substitute for the misleading " everlasting " the larger and 
far more satisfactory word " eternal." 

2 Cf. Dewick, p. 188. 

3 1 Tim. vi. 19; Dalman, p. 161. The phrase " eternal 
life " is not limited to the New Testament; it occurs in 
1 Enoch xxxvii. 4, xl. 9, lviii. 3; and Ps. Sol. iii. 16. 

69 



THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST 

equivalent to the Day of the Lord, first met with 
in Amos, Isaiah, and Joel, see p. 21.) If life is 
conceived in terms of time and space, and life at 
least includes these ; and if life is divided into ages, 
periods, epochs, which are successively introduced, 
developed, wound up, and consummated ; then 
each of these will have a " last day " ; marking 
the transition of one to the other. And when the 
most important epoch of all is brought to its con- 
clusion, this day will rightly be regarded as the 
Last Day par excellence. 

This day is in any case decisive, with whomsoever 
the decision may rest. It is in the full sense 
"critical" (i.e., involves a judgment, a fcpLats). 
And if the background and essence of human life 
include moral and spiritual elements ; if free will 
be a faculty of man ; then judgment is essential, 
sooner or later ; there must be a time of reckoning, 
of giving and taking account ; this is involved in 
the very nature of things. We find, therefore, as 
we should expect to find, that the coming of the 
Messiah in the Last Day is a coming to judgment ; 
this is expressed crudely in the Jewish writings, 
and implied in Our Lord's parables of the Pounds, 
the Talents, the Draw Net, the Unfaithful Servant, 
the Vineyard, etc. 

This coming of the Messiah is, usually, expressed 
by the Greek Trapowia, now transliterated into the 
technical term " Parousia." It is instructive to 
note the use of this word. In itself it is clearly 
abstract, and means rather " presence " : but as 
this involves a previous coming, it includes the 

70 



THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST 

thought of coming as well as being present. Yet 
the fact that Parousia is used, rather than a word 
denoting mere arrival, is significant as implying 
that it is continued presence after arrival that is 
foremost in the conception. 2 Also the phrase is 
quite general ; no qualifying words are used with 
it ; the phrases " Second Coming/ ' " Second 
Advent," are not scriptural ; the New Testament 
gives no categorical indication as to whether the 
Coming is single, or to be indefinitely repeated. 
Rather, the inference is that when Our Lord has 
come, when the Kingdom has been inaugurated, 
this Presence will be continuous and uninterrupted. 
If much reason can be shown for regarding the 
kingdom as having already arrived, Our Lord 
certainly speaks of a future coming, when the 
present influence of the kingdom and its King will 
be both revealed and greatly intensified and 
extended. 

Turning now from these typical words and phrases 
of current eschatology and their interpretation, let 
us look at Matt, xxiv., xxv. (Mark xiii., Luke xxi.), 
the central and most difficult passages, and see 
what meaning they have. In the first section 
(vv. 3-14) the application seems quite general, and 
the teaching is expressed in the usual current 
language ; 2 the passage might have come from any 
of the Jewish apocalyptists, with the exception of 

1 Cf. Hastings, iii., p. 674; Plummer, St. Matt., p. 329. 

2 Parallels have been noted above, pp. 4 ££. 

71 



THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST 

v. 14 : " And this gospel of the kingdom shall be 
preached in the whole world for a testimony unto 
all the nations ; and then shall the end come." 
(St. Mark xiii. 10 has : " The gospel must first be 
preached unto all the nations " ; St. Luke omits 
the words. Cf. Matt. x. 23 : " Ye shall not have 
gone through the cities of Israel, till the Son of 
Man be come.") That is to say, Our Lord teaches 
that before the " end " comes there will be portents 
and wars and tumults and strife and divisions and 
suffering and cruelty and false teachers and lapses 
and fallings away ; these things are but the begin- 
ning, but the end is not to come until the Gospel 
has been preached in the whole world ; when this 
has been effected, the end will come. We notice 
that Our Lord's details are expressed in very 
general terms, and that He gives no appalling and 
unnatural portents, such as are found in the Jewish 
parallels ; this is, of course, an instance of how He 
purified and spiritualised current conceptions. Also 
that His words about preaching the Gospel are 
entirely in accordance with the tenor of the Old 
Testament, which implies the evangelisation of the 
nations as a preliminary to the establishment of 
the Kingdom of God, in itself a spiritual conception. * 
But in vv. 15 ft., His words take on a definiteness 
unmistakable, and are seen to refer to the destruction 
of Jerusalem, which took place some forty years 
later. The conception is so material, and the 

1 Cf. Gen. xxii. 18; Ps. lxvii. 3, lxxii., ciii. 19; Isa. ii., lx. 
Zech. ix. 10; Mai. i. 11, etc. See Dahle, p. 273. 

72 



THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST 

references to Judaea and Jerusalem so obvious, 
that one cannot avoid the conclusion of a deliberate 
forestalling of an actual future event, and not a 
general reference to spiritual and moral matters, or 
words which might be applied to almost any crises 
of history. Difficulties increase with vv. 29 ff., in 
which He declares that " immediately, after those 
days " (i.e., after the destruction of Jerusalem), 
there shall be fresh portents and signs, followed 
by His appearance on the clouds of heaven, with 
power and great glory ; His coming is to be unex- 
pected, and shall take men by surprise, and will be 
followed by a judgment of the nations, the separation 
of the good from the evil, and the allotting to them 
of their appropriate rewards. St. Luke adds (xxi. 
32) that all these things are to happen within the 
present generation. (We may note here that in 
John xvii. 2, He speaks of returning to His disciples, 
and xxi. 22 implies that this will not be distant.) 

That is to say that Our Lord's teaching, which is 
elsewhere expressed in such general language, and 
deals with eternal verities only, and noticeably 
avoids the copious and precise detail of the apoca- 
lyptists, here takes a definitely historical colouring, 
and alludes to a definite historical event ; while at 
the same time reference is made to His own coming, 
and the final judgment and the " end of the 
age." 

Were His words merely general, interpretation 
would not be so difficult ; it is the mingling of the 
general with the particular that makes the difficulty, 
and the fact that some of His words were literally 

73 



THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST 

fulfilled, while the others seem to be still waiting 
for their fulfilment. 1 

We may take three lines of explanation. Either 
Our Lord was only a " child of His own age/' and 
was mistaken as to His own Messiahship, and was 
speaking words some of which were falsified by 
the subsequent turn of events. If this were so, it 
implies that He was merely a man and nothing 
more, a conclusion put forward, indeed, by some, 
but a conclusion hard, if not impossible, to be 
reconciled with the subsequent history of Chris- 
tianity. If it be the case that Jesus of Nazareth 
was a man and nothing more, it is hard to believe 
that the Christian Church and the Christian experi- 
ence could have been founded and flourished on 
the basis of false claims and mistaken teaching. 
The dilemma aut Deus aut homo non bonus still holds. 

An alternative is that of textual confusion, or 
at least fusing, i.e., the theory of the " Little 
Apocalypse/' suggested by Colani (1864) and 
developed by Weiffenbach and Wendt and others, 
i.e., that with Our Lord's words on the Mount of 
Olives has been worked in a Jewish or Jewish- 
Christian Apocalypse, written about a.d. 40-70. 2 

But the authorities show no confusion or great 
variation in the text. If the narrative is " conflate/' 
the process was very early ; as Dewick says : " It 

1 Cf. the views of scholars are summarised in Hastings, 
D B, i, p. 7506, iii, p. 675b ; Charles, Eschatology, pp. 379 ff. 

2 Cf. Schweitzer, pp. 224 ff.; Kennedy, pp. 168 ft.; E. Bibl. 
1857; Toy, pp. 360 ft.; Terry, pp. 213 ft.; Dewick, pp. 173 ft.; 
Salmond, pp. 300 ff.; Plummer, St. Luke, pp. 487. 

74 



THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST 

is on doctrinal, not on critical, grounds that the 
theory of the interpolated " Little Apocalypse " is 
really based." 1 (J. S. Russell, The Parousia, held 
that the application was solely to the destruction of 
Jerusalem, but his argument is forced and impos- 
sible ; Terry, however, holds on other grounds a 
similar position, and makes out a much better 
case. Von Dobschutz, Lect. II, also upholds the 
literal interpretation.) 

Another alternative is that Our Lord was from 
the first misunderstood by His hearers. 2 It would 
be natural that their minds should be full of eschato- 
logical thoughts, seeing how full of these was His 
own teaching, and their question on the Mount of 
Olives shows their eagerness. (Cf. Kennedy, p. 56 : 

No doubt the eschatological utterances of Jesus 
must have constituted a prominent element in the 
apostolic preaching and instruct ion." ) It is at 
least possible that they read into His words thoughts 
that He at all events did not intend, and even that 
allusions to actual events, such as the fall of Jerusa- 
lem, found their way unconsciously into the narra- 
tives which were the basis of the Gospels. That 
they should have misunderstood Him is even 
probable ; 3 and it is no less likely that He should 
have actually alluded to the fall of Jerusalem ; it 
hardly needed supernatural knowledge to see the 

1 P. 176. 

2 This is well brought out by Muirhead, pp. 26 ff., and by 
Von Dobschutz, pp. 75, 79 f£.; cf. Winstanley, p. 3. 

3 See p. 148, and cf. Sanday, Hibbert Journal, Oct., 
1911, pp. 94 ff. 

75 



THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST 

crisis into which the nation was drifting, and its 
probable fate. It is not so probable that the 
allusions to Jerusalem found their way into the 
narratives at a later date ; the evidence for the 
early date of the Gospels is good, and there is no 
MS. authority to uphold this suggestion. It is 
possible that they regarded His Resurrection as 
fulfilling His words, at least in a measure, from the 
portents which they record as happening at the 
time of the Passion. * If Our Lord's words seem 
to have been falsified by subsequent events, we 
must remember that elsewhere He stated delib- 
erately that He did not know the day or the hour 
of the end, 2 and we must attribute the conflict 
between the two statements to His interpreters, 
who are more likely to have been in error than He. 
The great details of the Jewish apocalyptists are in 
marked contrast to His indefiniteness, and human 
curiosity would prompt the insertion of details ; 
He Himself seems to have been careful mainly to 
warn His hearers that the crisis was impending, 
and to counsel watchfulness and faithfulness. 
A similar mingling, however, of the general and 
the particular is noticeable in the Jewish writers, 
see 4 Ezra v. 1 ff . — 

" Behold, the days come when the inhabitants 
of the earth shall be seized with great panic, 
And the way of truth shall be hidden, and the 
land be barren of faith. 



1 Matt, xxvii. 45, 51, xxviii. 2; Lk. xxiii. 44. 

2 Matt. xxiv. 36. 

76 



THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST 

And iniquity shall be increased above that 
which thou thyself now seest or that thou 
hast heard of long ago. And the land that 
thou seest now to bear rule shall be a path- 
less waste ; and men shall see it forsaken : 
if the Most High grant thee to live, thou 
shall see it after the third (period) in 
confusion. 
Then shall the sun suddenly shine forth by 

night, 
And the moon by day : 
And blood shall trickle forth from wood, and 

the stone utter its voice : 
The peoples shall be in commotion, 
The outgoings (?) (of the stars) shall change. 
And one whom the dwellers upon earth do not 
look for shall wield sovereignty, and the 
birds shall take to general flight, 
And the sea shall cast forth its fish. 
And one whom the many do not know will 
make his voice heard by night ; and all 
shall hear his voice." 
Sib. iv. 49 ff.— 

" First of all, the Assyrians shall rule over all 
mankind, holding the world for six generations under 
their sway, from the time when, since the heavenly 
God was wroth with the cities themselves and all 
mankind, the sea covered the earth with the outbreak 
of the flood. 

" Then shall the Medes subdue and vaunt them- 
selves on their throne, yet their generations shall be 
but two. In their time shall be these mighty works. 

77 



THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST 

Darkling night shall fall at the middle hour of day : 
the stars and the moon's disc shall fail from heaven. 
And the earth shaken by the upheaval of a mighty 
earthquake shall cast down headlong many cities 
and works of men. And then islands shall peep 
forth from the depths of the sea. 

''But when great Euphrates shall run in torrents 
of blood, then betwixt Medes and Persians the dread 
din of battle shall arise in war. And the Medes, 
overthrown by the Persians' spears, shall flee over 
the broad waters of the Tigris. And the Persians' 
might shall be supreme in all the world ; yet they 
shall have but one generation of prosperous kingship. 

" Then there shall be all those evil works which 
men pray to be spared, wars and murders, schisms 
and exiles, the headlong crash of towers and the 
overthrow of cities, when proud Hellas shall sail 
to the broad Hellespont, bringing grievous doom 
to Phrygians and to Asia." 

Etc., etc. 

By far the most likely and helpful solution 
of this admittedly difficult problem is that the 
disciples' minds were naturally coloured by the 
current apocalyptics ; that Our Lord used these 
current expressions and in a measure sanctioned 
the ideals and hopes contained in them ; that He 
did foresee and speak of the impending fate of 
Jerusalem ; that the disciples remembered His 
words faithfully and recorded them honestly, even 
to the putting side by side the ill-agreeing statements 
that the Coming should be before the evangelisation 

78 



THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST 

of the villages was complete, and that He did not 
know the time of the end ; * but that they did not 
really understand what He meant, and that their 
record was marred by both their general mystifica- 
tion and their previous mental attitude. (It is 
possible, also that He was designedly vague in His 
words, in order to make them think and to avoid 
being dogmatic, in accordance with His usual 
practice.) Critics are able to show fairly clearly, 
at all events in the case of St. Matthew's Gospel, 
different strata of teaching, representing the inter- 
pretations of different generations or groups of 
Christians of the original Gospel ; and the accept- 
ance of the Fourth Gospel, with its marked advance 
on the cruder eschatology of the Synoptics, shows 
that early Christian thought on this matter was 
confessedly fluid ; they felt that they had not 
properly understood Our Lord, and were working 
out an interpretation in the light of experience 
and with the help of the Holy Spirit. 2 

But, important as it is, we may not take this 
passage alone ; there are several other utterances 
of an apocalyptic nature elsewhere in the Gospels, 
so many that they must have been original to Him, 
and not put into His mouth by His disciples ; and 
His teaching on this matter has to be compared 
and conditioned by the nature and general trend of 
His teaching on other subjects. We may not 

1 Mk. xiii. 30, 32. 

2 See, further, Hastings, D C G , i, p. 342b, ii, pp. 149, 
150, 322, 439. 

79 



THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST 

separate His eschatological teaching from His 
whole revelation, of which it forms part ; the part 
must be interpreted in the light of the general 
character of the whole. The eschatological element 
by no means exhausts the whole content of His 
preaching, as Schweitzer allows. And it is well to 
remember that Our Lord's authority does not stand 
and fall with His eschatology ; this is not the main 
subject of His teaching, rather is it the form in which 
it is clothed. His authority and claim upon men's 
allegiance rest upon the exalted and satisfying 
nature of His ethical teaching, 1 and upon His 
living presentation of this ideal in His own Person. 
The value of His eschatology, therefore, turns upon 
the value of Himself, and not vice versa. 

Thus it is very noticeable that, while Our Lord 
purifies and raises the tone of the teaching which 
He took over from Judaism, He also spiritualises it. 
We see instances of it in the Synoptists, where the 
writers would not have been so likely to record and 
emphasise it ; and it is most noticeable of all in 
St. John. And this latter is a remarkable fact ; 
because if the tradition of Johannine authorship be 
true, — and the evidence against it is not over- 
whelming, when confronted with the evidence in 
its favour (the problem is admittedly difficult) — 
then it were only reasonable to suppose that the 
disciple whom Jesus loved has preserved for us 
more of the inner mind and meaning of his Master, 
than those who had not known Him so intimately. 

1 See Rashdall, Conscience and Christ, pp. 25 ff. 

80 



THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST 

In any case, the date of its composition would 
reflect the mind of the Church after several years 
of experience, when the expectation of an immediate 
return had been tested and found wanting. (C/. 
Dewick, pp. 203 ff., and see further, pp. 5ln, 102 ff.) 
For instance, in the Synoptists we find Him 
claiming the power to forgive sin, refusing to be 
treated as a Messianic king, as a wonder-worker, 
as merely a healer and philanthropist. x The 
parables of the kingdom turn on the inner analogy, 
not the outer. He claims, and exercises, authority 
over the spiritual world, and conveys the same to 
His disciples 2 — to Him the spiritual world is 
intensely real, and the spiritual confessedly trans- 
cends the material and temporal. He calls physical 
death " sleep ".; He says that any who do God's 
will are His relations ; that a man is defiled by the 
thoughts of his heart, and not by what he eats or 
does not eat. 3 He emphasises the need of repent- 
ance, particularly on the first announcement of 
the nearness of the Kingdom, and as implying an 
essential relation between the two (i.e., He qualifies 
the current eschatological concept with an assertion 
of the need and importance of moral values) ; 
everywhere He condemns legalism and formalism 
(Matt. ix. 14, xii. 1, 9, xv. 1, xviii. 2, 8, xix. 13, 16, 
xxi. 32, xxiii. ; Mk. xii. 34 ; Lk. x. 25, xi. 28, 37, 
xii., xiii. 1, 10, xiv. 1, 7, xv., xvi., xvii. 1-10, xviii. 9, 
xxi. 19, xxiv. 47). He tells the disciples that they 

1 Matt. ix. 6, xiii. 58; cf. Jn. vi. 26. 

2 Matt. viii. 28, x. 1; Lk. x. 17. 

3 Matt. ix. 24, xii. 46, xv. 11. 

81 



THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST 

are to be superior to earth and to physical suffer- 
ings ; that life is realised by spending and not by 
saving. * In His answer to the Sadducees' question, 
He raised the matter to an altogether higher plane. 2 
He said that Elijah had already come in the person 
of St. John Baptist. 3 He declares that develop- 
ment and progress take place in man's apprehension 
of the truth, and growth in moral and spiritual 
things. 4 He explains the words " Thy kingdom 
come " by " Thy will be done " ; and declares 
that entry into the kingdom is conditioned by the 
possession of a childlike character and attitude. 5 
As regards His own Person, His teaching and 
revelation is ever in the direction of the spiritual ; 
witness the transfiguration ; the nature of His 
Resurrection Body ; His Ascension ; His words to 
the Magdalene, and to the disciples : " Cling not 
to Me, for I am not yet ascended unto the Father." 
" Where two or three are gathered together in my 
name, there am I in the midst of them. ,, " I am 
with you all the days, even unto the end of the age." 6 
Passages in St. John's Gospel are too numerous 
to quote ; it must suffice to refer to the conversation 
with Nicodemus about the new birth of water and 
the Spirit ; the discourses on the Bread of Life, 
and the Water of Life ; to such pregnant and 



1 Mat. x. 9, 39; xvi. 21, xvii. 12, 22, xx. 18, 28, xxiv. 3. 

2 Matt. xxii. 15. 

3 Matt. xi. 14; xvii. 12; of. John i. 21. 

4 Matt. xi. 11, xiii. 52. 

5 Mk. x. 15. 

6 Matt, xvii, xviii. 20, xxviii. 20; Lk. xxiv; John xx. 17. 

82 



THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST 

illuminating dicta as " He that believeth on the 
Son hath eternal life " — " I am the Resurrection 
and the Life " — " This is life eternal, that they 
should know Thee " (i.e., immortality is moral and 
spiritual, not spatial and temporal). 1 

The whole tendency of Our Lord's teaching is to 
raise and to purify and to spiritualise. This is 
evident when speaking on other subjects ; and it 
is as evident in those other passages and remarks, 
not yet considered, which bear an eschatological 
nature ; for the chapters and passages already 
dealt with do not exhaust His eschatological 
teaching. 

For instance, when the Scribe made a wise 
comment on His answer to the question about the 
great commandment of the Law, He replied : 
" Thou art not far from the Kingdom of God " ; a 
implying thereby that the Kingdom was not some- 
thing in the uncertain future, but a spiritual force 
realisable in the present. 

In Lk. xvi. 16, He says : " The law and the 
prophets were until John : from that time the gospel 
of the kingdom is preached, and every man entereth 
violently into it." 3 The allusion here is to the 
violent wave of feeling which swept over the land 
and drove men to become Christ's adherents ; but 
it implies, like the preceding passage, that the 

1 Ch. iii., iv., vi., xi. 25, xvii. 3; cf. Matt. xi. 27; and see, 
further, pp. 30, 45. 

2 Mk. xii. 34. 

3 Cf. Matt. xi. 12. 

83 



THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST 

kingdom has at all events begun, if it be not 
completed ; it is an influence in men's hearts, not 
an outward organisation. 

Still more clearly is this implied by Lk. xvii. 21 : 
" The Kingdom of God is within you," whether the 
meaning be " in your midst," or " within your 
hearts." In either case it is an influence, and 
already present and at work. x 

In St. John, as w r e might expect, such passages 
are more frequent, cf. iv. 35 : " The fields are white 
already unto harvest," which implies that the 
harvest, which is the end of the age, 2 is already 
present, in the spiritual condition of men's hearts. 3 

In v. 24, He asserts that eternal life may be had 
here and now, on the basis of belief in Him : " He 
that heareth my Word, and believeth Him that 
sent me, hath eternal life, and cometh not into 
judgment, but hath passed out of death into life " ; 
cf. vi. 47 (i.e., it is according to a man's inner 
spiritual condition that he has eternal life or not, 
and not according to his outward status or 
condition) . 

In vi. 54, 56, eternal life is conveyed through the 
eating and drinking of His flesh and blood, and by 
" abiding in " Him (i.e., it is by a personal, spiritual 
relation of the most intimate kind, and not through 
any legal status, still less through any changes in 
the natural world). And it is to be had here and 

1 The passage is well discussed by Von Dobschiitz, 
p. 129; and Dalman, pp. 139, 143. 

2 Matt. xiii. 39. 

3 Cf. Lk. x. 2. 

84 



THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST 

now, even if a " last day " is mentioned in the 
same breath. 1 

In xii. 31, xvi. 11, He declares that a " judgment " 
has already taken place (a familiar thought in St. 
John) and of the ruler of this " age " (a clear 
allusion to the apocalyptic Beliar). No cataclysm 
had taken place, neither had any unusual portents 
been noted, and the events foretold in Matt. xxiv. 
had not occurred; the judgment that had taken 
place was in the moral and spiritual sphere, in the 
acceptance and denial of Him by His hearers, and 
the moral and spiritual crisis occasioned by His 
coming and teaching. 

In xvii. 15, He prays not that they may be taken 
out of the world (#007x09), but that they may be 
delivered from the evil one (i.e., it is a spiritual 
blessing which He desires for them) . (Allusion is 
not made to the passage iii. 16 ff, as this may be a 
comment of the evangelist's own.) 

We may note also that Our Lord in His predic- 
tions of the coming of the kingdom never foretold 
material blessings ; His promises are conveyed in 
symbolic language ; 2 His disciples receive " life " ; 
the Twelve may sit on Twelve Thrones, but it is 
to judge the twelve tribes (i.e., it is authority that 
they are to receive, and authority is a non-sub- 
stantial entity). The sons of the kingdom " sit at 
endless feast" with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob; 3 

1 Cf. xiv. 20. 

2 Cf. Muirhead, p. 51. 

3 Matt. viii. 11; and cf. His words at the Last Supper, 
xx vi. 29. 

85 



THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST 

but it is not intended that these words should be 
taken in the crude literal sense of the traditional 
Messianic Banquet ; they are a symbol of eternal 
bliss. The penitent thief is to be with Him in 
" Paradise " ; but no hint is given as to the meaning 
of this. Our Lord takes the thought and allows 
the thief to put his own meaning into it. Those 
who have renounced material blessings in this 
world are to receive the same in an enhanced degree, 
but He 'says expressly that these are to be super- 
seded by eternal life in the age to come. x To quote 
Muirhead, He presented the Kingdom of God as 
" the sum of all the good things belonging to the 
supernatural life of God's children, and that these 
good things are, primarily, powers of holy truth 
and love acting on the human conscience and will ; 2 
" He preached God's reigning will in grace and 
judgment " ; 3 His view of the Kingdom as some- 
thing transcendent is shown by the very fact that 
He used the apocalyptic imagery in which to 
describe it. 4 Cf. Dalman : " The theocracy about 
to make its entrance into the world was some- 
thing more than a gratifying realisation of 
the hopes entertained regarding it ; it was a 
creative force bringing new ideas in its train." 5 
His idea of the kingdom, says Dr. Bruce, was " a 
kingdom of grace in order to be a kingdom of 
holiness. ,,6 

Again, we cannot help marking the contrast 

1 Matt. xix. 29. 2 P. 114. 3 P. 64. 

4 P. 104. 5 P. 139. 6 P. 54. 

86 



THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST 

between His teaching and that of other apoca- 
lyptists. x Whether it be in Daniel, or in Enoch, 
or elsewhere, we notice that they give the most 
precise details as to time and place and condition ; 
they mention angels, good and bad, by name ; 
they describe the visions and experiences which 
they have been favoured with ; they describe 
strange beasts and monsters, which symbolise 
events or people in current history ; occasionally, 
as in 2 Enoch, there is a great deal of information 
given about the material universe, and the heavenly 
spheres, a kind of primitive physical and astronom- 
ical science. These are noticeably absent in the 
mouth of Our Lord. He gives no periods of 
M seventy weeks/' or days or aeons. It is true 
that He clearly exhibits a determinism in His 
teaching (e.g., Matt. x. 30 : " The very hairs of 
your head are all numbered " ; Lk. xiii. 32 : "I 
cast out devils and perform cures to-day and to- 
morrow, and the third day I am perfected " ; 
xxii. 22 : " The Son of Man indeed goeth, as it hath 
been determined " ; 37 : " This which is written 
must be fulfilled in Me " ; 53 : " This is your hour, 
and the power of darkness " ; John vii. 6, 8 : " My 
time is not yet come, fulfilled " ; xi. 9 : " Are there 
not twelve hours in the day ? If a man walk in 
the day, he stumbleth not, because he seeth the 
light of this world. But if a man walk in the 
night, he stumbleth, because the light is not in 

1 Cf. Kennedy, p. 18; Dewick, p. 225; Foundations* 
p. 112; Oesterley, p. 190. 

87 



THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST 

him " ; cf. vii. 30, viii. 20, xii. 23, xiii. 1, xxiv. 
26, 44) ; but He gives no indication of when or 
where, excepting in Matt, xxiv., which only repre- 
sents a partial side of His eschatology, and possibly 
misrepresents His actual teaching, and where the 
" general " and the " particular " are strangely 
intertwined ; His usual attitude is that " of that 
day and hour knoweth no man, not even the Son, 
but the Father only," the whole future is shrouded 
in obscurity ; " The kingdom of God cometh not 
with observation " (i.e., cannot be calculated or 
brought within known periods of time). Yet, as 
regards the future, He does not dream vaguely of 
a new heaven and earth in despair of this. For 
Him, in contrast to others, this world is a perfectly 
possible world, and only needs that men should 
acknowledge His kingship ; His conception of the 
kingdom presupposes this present earth ; and He 
came to save sinners, not to destroy them. x 

He tacitly accepts the angelology and demonology 
of His day (as in Matt. xii. 25 ff.), neither affirming 
nor denying its truth ; but only one spirit does He 
ever name, and that sparingly (i.e., Satan). 2 He 
gives no highly-coloured version of His experiences ; 
the nearest approach to these are the Temptation, 
the story of which must have come from His own 
mouth ; the Transfiguration, which was shared by 
some of the disciples ; and the passage, Lk. x. 18 : 

1 Cf. Rashdall, op. tit., p. 200; Hastings, D C G, ii, p. 145a. 

2 Matt. xii. 26, xvi. 23; Mk. iv. 15; Lk. x. 18, xiii. 16, 
xxii. 31. 

88 



THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST 

" I beheld Satan fallen as lightning from heaven," 
which may be merely a symbolic way of announcing 
the beginning of His triumph, and is an echo of 
Isa. xiv. 12 (in any case, it implies the actual 
presence of the kingdom). The rarity and the 
moderation of such expressions is very much the 
reverse of what we find elsewhere. 

He gives no allegorical versions of history, por- 
trayed under the form of fantastic and composite 
and transmogrified creatures, as in Daniel and 
Enoch ; He only alludes to the " abomination of 
desolation," a traditional conception, and part of 
the current terminology, originating in Daniel. 
And there is nothing in the nature of physical 
science or astronomy ; here, as in all else, His 
teaching studiously avoids concrete details, and 
deals with abstract principles ; it is the eternal and 
absolute, the spiritual and unchanging, that He 
handles and emphasises ; the temporal and tran- 
sient, the changing and the material, that He 
either neglects or passes over. His teaching about 
eschatology is parallel to that on other subjects. 
He accepts and uses current conceptions and 
terms (how else could He have taught ?), but does 
not commit Himself as to their actual truth or 
untruth, as when He accepts the Davidic authorship 
of the Psalms and the traditional authorship of 
" Daniel," and the Mosaic authorship of the Penta- 
teuch, x which we in our day have seen reason to 
modify (and we believe without either disrespect 

1 C/. also John x. 35 : " The Scripture cannot be 
broken/ ' 

89 



THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST 

to His Person or detriment to His Divinity). He 
expressly allows for growth and development in 
man's apprehension of eternal truth, and, therefore, 
for the discarding and changing of the forms in 
which it is apprehended ; cf. Matt. xiii. 52 : " Every 
scribe who hath been made a disciple of the kingdom 
of heaven is like unto a man that is a householder, 
which bringeth forth out of his treasure things new 
and old " ; John xvi. 12, 13 : "I have yet many 
things to say unto you, but ye cannot bear them 
now. Howbeit, when He, the Spirit of Truth, is 
come, He shall guide you into all the truth — and 
He shall declare unto you the things that are to 
come." 

This is, perhaps, the best place in which to point 
out yet another, and a perplexing feature of His 
teaching. When speaking of the kingdom and its 
effects, He both asserts and implies that it is already 
present, and that its blessings may be had here and 
now by those who comply with its conditions. 
One or two passages already quoted have revealed 
this, 1 and there are many others. For instance, 
His first utterance was that the kingdom of heaven 
was at hand, a phrase clearly implying at the least, 
nearness, if not actual presence (the Greek is riyyi/ce 
= " has drawn near ") ; and His application of 
Isa. lxi. to Himself in the Synagogue of Capernaum 
conveys the same implication, that " the time has 
been fulfilled/' and the promised Golden Age is 

1 Cf. pp. 83 ff. 

90 



THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST 

already present. 1 The same message were the 
Twelve and the Seventy commissioned to deliver ; 2 
and the Twelve were told that the Son of Man 
should have come before the evangelisation of the 
cities of Israel were completed. 3 In Mk. ii. 19, 
He describes Himself as the Bridegroom, and 
asserts that this is not the time for fasting, implying 
that the time for rejoicing has rather come. And 
the following verses, about the new wine and the 
new patch of cloth imply equally clearly that a 
new era had commenced. When St. John Baptist 
sent to enquire if Jesus were the Messiah or no, 
Our Lord directed his attention to the healing of 
the sick and the other good works which it was 
held that the Messiah would perform, adding the 
significant words : " Blessed is he that shall not be 
offended in Me." 4 Just as, later on, He said: 
" Blessed are your eyes, for they see ; and your 
ears, for they hear. For verily I say unto you, 
that many prophets and righteous men desired to 
see the things which ye see, and saw them not ; 
and to hear the things which ye hear and heard 
them not"; 5 and He declared that St. John 
Baptist was Elijah come again, in accordance with 
the traditional belief. 6 In Matt. xii. 28, He makes 
an unequivocal statement that the Kingdom has 

1 Lk. iv. 18. 

2 Mt. x. 7; Lk. x. 9. 

3 Matt. x. 23. 

4 Matt. xi. 4, cf. John vii. 31. 

5 Matt. xiii. 16; cf. John viii. 56 : " Abraham rejoiced 
to see my day." 

6 Matt. xi. 14, xvii. 12. 

91 



THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST 

come : " If I by the Spirit of God cast out devils, 
then is the Kingdom of God come upon you." 
A similar statement is found in John v. 25, prefaced 
by His solemnest asseveration : " Verily, verily, 
I say unto you, the hour cometh, and now is, when 
the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God ; 
and they that hear shall live." In Matt, xxiii. 13, 
He rebukes the Pharisees for not entering the 
kingdom themselves, and for keeping others out ; 
just as in Mk. xii. 13, He hints that there is no 
necessary antagonism between the kingdom of 
Caesar and His own, a man may be a loyal subject 
of both at one and the same time (exactly as St. 
Paul teaches in Rom. xiii). Of similar import are 
the passages in which He claims that all authority 
has been given unto Him, words which both imply 
His Messianic claims and His present possession of 
Messianic prerogatives ; (see Mk. i. 22 : " He taught 
men as one having authority " ; Mk. xi. 27 : " All 
things have been delivered unto me of My Father " ; 
xxviii. 18 : " All 'authority hath been given unto 
me in heaven and on earth ") ; the entry on Palm 
Sunday, where, even if His action had no Messianic 
import (it is denied by some commentators), at 
least He accepted the greetings of the people, and 
asserted that the stones would continue them if the 
people ceased ; 1 the use of the present tense in 
His parables — " The Kingdom is like, ofioia io-riv." 
The (only) categorical words claiming to be the 
Messiah have the same import : " From henceforth 

1 Lk. xix. 40. 

92 



THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST 

(air' aprt) ye shall see the Son of Man sitting at the 

right hand of power, and coming on the clouds of 

heaven." 1 The words " sitting " and " coming " 

clearly imply a present and final and conclusive 

act, together with a perpetual exercise of the 

authority and power which that act denotes. 

Cf. Gould, in Internat. Critical Commentary on 

St. Mark : " The coming is not a single event, 

any more than the sitting on the right hand of 

power ; and it was a thing which was to begin 

with the very time of Our Lord's departure from 

the world. Moreover, the two things, the sitting 

on the right hand of power, and the coming, are 

connected in such a way as to mean that He is to 

assume power in heaven and exercise it here in the 

world. The period beginning with the departure 

of Jesus from the world was to be marked by this 

assumption of heavenly power by the Christ, and 

by repeated interferences in crises of the world's 

history, of which the destruction of Jerusalem was 

the first." 2 

And it was not only verbal teaching — He upheld 
it in deed ; because His power over nature, over 
disease, over evil spirits, even death itself, as well 
as the power of His preaching and personal influ- 
ence, showed the reality and the present possession 
of His " kingship " ; the authority was not only 
claimed but it was demonstrated. 

St. John's Gospel is full of passages which imply 



1 Mk. xxvi. 64. 

2 P. 252. 



93 



THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST 

the present existence of the kingdom. Some of 
these have already been mentioned, and the whole 
section xiv.— xvi. implies that it may be experienced 
by men ; no hint is given that they will have to 
wait, save the words about the Holy Spirit, and 
" that day," where it is clearly implied that the 
kingdom, if already present, is not yet complete ; 
but, " He that hath seen Me hath seen the Father." 
We may note also that the satisfaction received 
from the Water of Life and the Bread of Life is 
both complete and permanent, and no hint is given 
that either must be waited for. x In v. 40, it is 
implied that life may be had now by " coming to 
Christ. " In xviii. 36, He declares " My kingdom 
is not of this world," clearly implying its present 
reality. 2 

In Muirhead's words : " To Jesus indeed, in His 
filial knowledge of God, His consciousness of a 
unique call and a corresponding endowment, and 
the perfect repose of His Spirit upon the holy and 
loving will of His Father in heaven, the Kingdom 
that was His Father's gift was a present reality ; 
but we must not overlook the fact that all through 
His preaching — not simply in eschatological dis- 
courses delivered towards the close of His life — 
He presented the -Kingdom in a futuristic 
aspect." 3 

Or, to quote Von Dobschutz, whose work is clear 
and sane and well-balanced : " The evidence 

1 iv. 14; vi. 35. 

2 On this point, see Von Dobschutz, pp. 125 ff. 

3 P. 80, cf. Hastings, I. 750&. 

94 



THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST 

collected is quite sufficient to prove that in the 
teaching of Jesus there is a strong line of what I 
would call transmuted eschatology. I mean escha- 
tology transmuted in the sense that what was 
spoken of in Jewish eschatology as to come in the 
last days is taken here as already at hand in the 
lifetime of Jesus ; transmuted at the same time in 
the other sense that what was expected as an 
external change is taken inwardly ; not all people 
seeing it, but Jesus' disciples becoming aware of 

it Now we must compare this with the 

first group of sayings dealing with pure eschatology : 
Jesus the Messiah to come on the clouds of heaven ; 
the Messianic judgment to be held at the end of the 
days ; the Messianic meal to take place after this 
glorious event, and so on. Both groups are quite 
distinct and to be kept separate. Neither of them 
may be reduced easily to the other one without 
violence being done to the tradition, nor can 
we put aside one of them as a later addition or 
transformation, both being attested by our best 
sources/ ' x 

It should be also noted how the parables relating 
to the kingdom vary in their implication. Some 
are of the " catastrophic " kind, such as the Draw 
Net, the Pounds, the Talents, the Unfaithful 
Servant, the Virgins, although even these imply 
considerable delay before the Return and the final 
reckoning or end. But others are evolutionary, 
and present the kingdom not as an event or series 

1 Pp. 150 ff., cf. Charles, Eschatology, pp. 371 ff. 

95 



THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST 

of events, so much as a process, which may be long 
or short in itself, but, when applied to the world 
of which it is asserted, must be indefinitely long. 
The parables of the Sower, the Seed growing 
secretly, the Mustard-seed, the Leaven, the Tares, 
the Unjust Judge, the Selfish Neighbour, when 
viewed in the light of history and human experi- 
ence, give no countenance to the thought of a 
speedy consummation of all things, or of one single 
definite event. (His teaching about the many false 
Christs who are to appear before the end both 
requires a long period of time in which to be realised, 
and may equally imply that there will be many 
" ends " and many crises, in which the same 
phenomenon will be repeated.) 

The upshot of the preceding argument, then, is 
this : Our Lord's eschatology is based on the 
conceptions of His own day, and can be traced 
through the Jewish Pseudepigraphic writings back 
to the Old Testament, of which they were the 
legitimate and natural successors. This current 
Judaism varied widely and materially in its ideas 
and teaching, and it developed steadily from the 
physical conception of the kingdom to the spiritual, 
from the legal to the ethical, from the national 
to the human, in exactly the same way that the Old 
Testament prophets were concerned mainly with 
moral considerations ; so that the details are 
considerably less reliable than the principles which 
they try to express. In Our Lord's teaching we 
notice the same tendency, i.e., a development of 

96 



THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST 

the preceding conceptions, a raising of them, a puri- 
fication of their grossness, a spiritualising of them, 
with an elimination of familar detail, and a growing 
vagueness and generality. (Some writers, indeed, 
trace a development in His own actual teaching, 
but this is precarious ; as Schweitzer says [p. 7] 
there are equally good grounds for denying as for 
asserting it.) In one place only, the crucial dis- 
course on the Mount of Olives, does He go into any 
great detail : and here it is possible that His hearers 
misunderstood Him, and have mingled His words 
with others with which they w r ere familiar, and 
thought appropriate, and even intended by Him. 
The general character of His eschatological teaching 
is similiar to that on other subjects, i.e., it tends 
away from the particular to the general, from the 
concrete to the abstract, from details to principles, 
a feature which precludes a literal interpretation. 
As His teaching was a development, so He allowed 
for further development in man's apprehension of 
the Truth. And the inference is that He regarded 
the principles as perpetually expressing and re-ex- 
pressing themselves in human history and experi- 
ence ; the outward form and detail and grouping 
were always varying, but the inner conflict of good 
and evil was always present, and it was this that 
occasioned the doings of mankind. There was to 
be a consummation, but no one but God the Father 
knew when it would be ; His own coming had 
caused a crisis in human history, it was the turning- 
point, marking the commencement of the overthrow 
of evil ; and His call to men marked the crisis in 

97 



THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST 

the lives of each, their future being determined by 
the way in which they responded and by their 
attitude towards Him. The kingdom was " at 
hand/' and " eternal life " could be had here and 
now, even if the end was not yet. 1 

1 Cf. Robertson, p. 75, 99; Worsley, p. 50; Bruce, pp. 273. 



98 



CHAPTER III 

This account of Our Lord's eschatological teaching 
would not be complete without some mention of 
the way in which it was received by His disciples, 
and understood by them. Already we have seen 
something of this, in the Gospels, where it is difficult, 
not to say impossible, to distinguish between the 
actual utterances of Our Lord, and the form or 
colouring in which His hearers have clothed them. 
But, at any rate, we have seen two clearly-marked 
groups of His teaching, one dealing with temporal 
and historical details, and one dealing with eternal 
and spiritual truths, and showing development and 
progress and growth in conception. It is not 
otherwise with the rest of the New Testament ; 
that is to say that the various writers show develop- 
ment in their own eschatological ideas, and represent 
the Return of Christ and the coming of the Kingdom, 
now as yet to come, and now in a measure at least 
as already realised ; now in material terms, now in 
spiritual, now as static, now dynamic. 

The teaching of Acts is all on one side, and looks 
forward to a future coming. The angel tells the 
watching disciples on the Mount of the Ascension 
that " this Jesus . . . shall so come in like manner 
as ye have beheld Him going into heaven." x St. 
Peter declares 2 that Christ has been received into 

1 i. 11. 2 iii. 21. 

99 



THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST 

heaven " until the times of restoration of all things," 
foretold by the age-long line of prophets ; x that 
He has been " ordained of God to be the judge of 
quick and dead." 2 St. Paul says that this judgment 
is yet in the future, on a fixed day ; 3 and that 
" through many tribulations we must enter into 
the kingdom of God " ; 4 the rest of the ideas are 
what we should have expected in the mouth of a 
Jewish convert in a very early stage of the Christian 
consciousness, before either time or experience had 
been able to modify or illuminate the traditional 
notions, and when persecution made it only too 
clear that evil was not yet subdued, or the good 
consummated. Yet it is noteworthy that the 
present tense is used of those who are " in the way 
of salvation." 5 

The Epistle to the Hebrews takes, on the whole, 
the same line, again as would have been expected. 
Thus, the Jewish-Christian readers are exhorted to 
hold their hope and profession firm unto the end. 6 
They have, indeed, tasted the " powers of the age 
to come," but it is clear that the latter is not fully 
realised; 7 the Sabbath-rest " remaineth," yet to 
be entered into, 8 the promise is yet to be received ; 9 
all things have been subjected unto the Son, but 



1 Cf. Dalman, p. 178. 

2 x. 42 ; but no time is here indicated. 

3 xvii. 31, cf. xxiv. 25. 

4 xiv. 22 ; for St. Paul's teaching see below, pp. 102 ff. 

5 ii. 47, etc. 6 iii. 6, 14. 7 vi. 5, 18-20. 
8 iv. 9. 9 x. 36. 

100 



THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST 

now we see not yet all things subjected to Him. 1 
He is " expecting till His enemies be made the 
footstool of His feet" ; 2 Christ is to "appear a 
second time ... to them that wait for Him "; 3 the 
"day" is still "drawing nigh." 4 On the other 
hand, they have come to " Mount Zion, and unto 
the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, 
and to innumerable hosts of angels, to the general 
assembly and church of the first born who are 
enrolled in heaven, and to God the Judge of all, 
and to the spirits of just men made perfect, and to 
Jesus " ; they have received " a kingdom that 
cannot be shaken." 5 Clearly something has already 
been realised, even if the next chapter states that 
" we have not here an abiding city, but we seek 
after the city which is to come." 6 

St. James and St. Peter and St. Jude teach similar 
views, and for the same reasons. St. James exhorts 
his readers to be " patient until the coming of the 
Lord," and says that this is imminent. 7 St. Peter, 
writing at a later date, speaks of "a salvation 
ready to be revealed in the last time," " the revela- 
tion of Jesus Christ," 8 but declares that " the end 
of all things is at hand," that " the time is come 
for judgment to begin at the house of God"; 9 
yet believers already " rejoice greatly with joy 
unspeakable and full of glory ; receiving the end 

1 ii. 8. 2 x. 13. 3 ix. 28. 4 x. 25 ff. 

5 xii. 22-24, 28. 6 xiii. 14. 7 v. 7, 8. 

8 i. 5, 7, 13 ; cf. v. 1, 4, Jude 21, 24. 

9 iv. 7, 17. 

101 



THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST 

of your faith, even the salvation of your souls/' 
even if they do not actually see Christ. 1 2 Peter 
(dating from c. a.d. 150, Chase; a century earlier, 
Pullan) is characteristically Jewish ; it looks for a 
future revelation of Christ ; the " day of judgment " 
is yet to come, and the " day of the Lord " will 
come without warning. 2 

The teaching of the Johannine Epistles, dating 
from the end of the first century a.d., is similar to 
that of the Fourth Gospel ; and both strains of 
teaching are evident. " The true light already 
shineth," and " we have passed out of death into 
life." 3 " The Son of God is come, and hath given 
us an understanding, that we know Him that is 
true, and we are in Him that is true, even in His 
Son Jesus Christ. This is the true God, and eternal 
life." 4 Yet, in spite of the rapture and the satis- 
faction which this consciousness and experience 
may bring, we are to look for another manifestation 
of the Son of God : "It is not yet made manifest 
what we shall be. We know that if He shall be 
manifested we shall be like Him ; for we shall 
see Him even as He is." 5 This manifestation is 
not far off ; for it is now " the last hour." 6 

In the case of St. Paul, we notice a very marked 
change in his conceptions, between the earliest and 
the latest of his writings, as well as a mingling of 

1 i. 8. 2 ii. 9, iii. 7, 10. 

3 1 ii. 8, iii. 14 ; cf. v. 11. 4 1 v. 20. 
5 1 iii. 2, cf. ii. 28. 6 1 ii. 18. 

102 



THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST 

the material with spiritual conceptions, the mystical 
and moral with the historic and physical. x In the 
earliest (1 and 2 Thess.) he clearly expects a speedy 
return of Christ, and he describes it in the sensuous 
imagery of the popular thought of his day. The 
coming (Parousia) is still in the future, 2 and its 
time is unknown "asa thief in the night." 3 It will 
be attended with the visible cloud, the audible 
voice and trumpet of the archangel, the bodily 
descent of Christ out of the sky, and the levitation 
of believers " to meet the Lord in the air," 4 and a 
flaming fire for the destruction of the ungodly. 5 

In the next group of letters, as chronologically 
accepted, we find the sensuous literal conceptions 
still put forward. Thus, in 1 Cor. iii. 13, the 
Judgment Day is to bring a test by fire. In xv. 52, 
he again mentions the trumpet ; and, from the 
popular inability to dissociate personality from the 
physical case which clothes it, he is driven to 
invent the self-contradictory conception of a 
" spiritual body." 6 He holds that a definite stage 
was reached by the Resurrection and Ascension of 
Christ, and that the kingdom so inaugurated is 
yet to be made complete ; and " when all things 
have been subjected unto Him," " when He shall 
have abolished all rule and all authority and 

1 Cf. Charles, E. Bibl., p. 1381, Kennedy, pp. 158 ff. 

2 1 ii. 19, iii. 13, v. 23. 

3 1 v. 2. 

4 1 iv. 13 ff. This he claims to have been revealed to 
him by Christ. 

5 2 i. 7, ii. 

• Cf. Tyrrell, p. 147. 

103 



THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST 

power/ ' Christ shall appear the second time and 
surrender His Kingdom to the Father. x " The 
time is shortened," " the fashion of this world 
passeth away " ; upon us " the ends of the ages 
are come." 2 

But after this letter his ideas undergo a change. 
He still believes in a future return of Christ, but it 
is not so immediate, and he drops the traditional 
view of a visible appearance with clouds of glory 
and attendant hosts of angels. His thoughts turn 
more into a moral and spiritual groove. Christ's 
return is for judgment, 3 as in 1 and 2 Thess. and 
1 Cor. iii. 13, v. 5, but nothing is said as to the how 
or when or where. (Cf. xiv. 10 : " We shall all 
stand before the judgment-seat of God," where the 
words are metaphorical rather than intended 
literally ; as in 2 Cor. v. 10.) The verdict will 
turn on the character of those judged, 4 and he 
exhorts his readers to grow in grace and to be 
transformed into a new man. This new man is 
the image of the Lord, and the glory to be finally 
revealed has already been partially received. 5 

1 xv. 20 ff. In some of the Jewish books the Kingdom 
of the Messiah is regarded as temporary and preliminary 
to the final age of bliss ; 2 Bar. xxx. 1 : " And it shall 
come to pass after these things, when the time of the 
Advent of the Messiah is fulfilled, that He shall return in 
glory " ; xl. 3 : " His principate will stand for ever, until 
the world of corruption is at an end, and until the times 
aforesaid are fulfilled " ; cf. lxxiii., lxxiv., 1 Enoch xci- 
civ. In 4 Ezra vii. 29, the Messiah dies before the final 
age. (Cf. Schurer, II, 2, p. 176.) 

2 vii. 29,31, x. 11. 3 Rom. ii. 5. 

4 ii. 6 ff. 5 xii. 2, 2 Cor. iii. 18. 

104 



THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST 

He is concerned more with present duties than with 
future rewards ; these latter are dependent on the 
former, and the development of character and life 
in the spirit are things which take time ; so that 
the future is not so immediately important ; indeed, 
if the present is cared for adequately, the future 
will take care of itself. We have the help of the 
Holy Spirit for present needs and duties, and for 
the transformation of character ; and for the 
future we may leave all to God's love, in full and 
perfect confidence. 1 Moreover, he has given up 
the thought of a great cataclysm and the " falling 
away " and the destruction of the wicked which is 
found in Thess. ; instead he looks forward to the 
gradual conversion of the Gentiles and the ingather- 
ing of all nations into the kingdom, for God has 
mercy upon all. 2 This is a very different thought, 
and its consummation manifestly will be very far 
distant ; the Return cannot be immediate. (At 
times, however, the earlier thoughts recur ; c/. 
xiii. 12 : " The night is far spent, the day is at 
hand " ; and in the third group, Phil. iv. 5 : " The 
Lord is at hand," also in 1 Cor. xvi. 22.) And the 
passage 2 Cor. iii. 12-v. 10, manifestly reveals a 
spiritual ideal ; things seen are temporal, but the 
unseen are eternal ; we have a house not made 
with hands, eternal, in the heavens ; we walk by 
faith, not by sight ; if we have known Christ after 
the flesh, now we know Him so no more ; if any 



1 Rom. viii. 

2 Rom. xi. 



105 



THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST 

man be in Christ, there is a new creation ; the old 
things are passed away and have become new ; 
dying, we live ; we have nothing, and yet possess 
all things. C/., too, Phil. iv. 8 ; Rom. ii. 29, vii. 6 ; 
2 Cor. iii. 6. 

In the third group of letters we notice a further 
advance made, and on the same lines. In 1 Cor. 
xv. 24, he said that Christ is to surrender His 
kingdom to the Father, " that God may be all in 
all " ; but in Eph. and Col., it is Christ Himself 
Who is the be-all and end-all of creation, as He was 
the prime agent in its commencement, and is that 
in which all things cohere ; the consummation is 
His " fulness/' (See Eph. i. 10 : " To sum up all 
things in Christ " ; iv. 13 : " Till we all attain . . . 
unto a full-grown man, unto the measure of the 
stature of the fulness of Christ " ; Col. i. 16 : "In 
Him were all things created ... all things have 
been created through Him and unto Him ; and He 
is before all things, and in Him all things hold 
together " ; i. 18 : That in all things He might 
have the pre-eminence. For it was the good 
pleasure of the Father that in Him should all the 
fulness dwell " ; iii. 11 : " Christ is all, and in all.") 
It follows from this that God intends the salvation 
of all men, 1 and the tone and thoughts of these 
letters clearly imply the reconciliation of evil spirits 
as well as of wicked men : nothing and no one is 
to be left out of the kingdom. It is obvious that 
no immediate return of Christ is looked for ; but 

1 1 Tim. ii. 4. 

106 



THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST 

that the consummation is conceived more as a 
raising of men to Him, a summing up and completion 
of all things in Him, than as a return of Him to 
them. And he repeatedly uses the expression 
M heavenly sphere " of the medium through which 
the development is to be realised. * 

Side by side with this development of thought 
and changing conception we notice the concurrent 
presentation of two attitudes towards life. As 
already stated, St. Paul regards the coming of 
Jesus Christ as marking a turning-point in human 
history, a crisis in the eternal conflict between good 
and evil. The kingdom has come, but it is not yet 
fully realised. We have received the " earnest of 
the spirit/' 2 and this is an abiding joy, a never- 
failing help (cf. Rom. viii. 37 : " In all these things 
we are more than conquerors " ; viii. 1 : " There 
is therefore now no condemnation to them that are 
in Christ Jesus " ; 1 Cor. iv. 20 : " The kingdom of 
God is not in word but in power ; xiv. 17 : The king- 
dom of God is righteousness, and peace, and j oy in the 
Holy Spirit " ; Gal. ii. 20 : "I live, and yet no 
longer I, but Christ liveth in me " ; iii. 14 : " That 
upon the Gentiles might come the blessing of 
Abraham in Christ Jesus ; that we might receive 
the promise of the Spirit through faith " ; Phil, 
iv. 13 : "I can do all things through Him that 
strengthened me"; Eph. i. 18 : " That ye may 
know what is . . . the riches of the glory of His 
inheritance in the saints, and what the exceeding 

1 Cf. Eph. passim., and the Dean of Wells's note. 

2 2 Cor. i. 22, v. 5 ; Eph. i. 14. 

107 



THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST 

greatness of His power to us-ward who believe " ; 
iii. 16: "Strengthened with power through His 
spirit in the inward man"). The Christian has 
received something which has transformed him and 
transfigured his life, so that he is proof against any- 
thing, and is always rejoicing ; his joy is intangible, 
"no man taketh it " away from him; he lives 
already in a different sphere, and his life is " hid 
with Christ in God " ; he has realised his Lord's 
words about their mutual indwelling and abiding. * 
What more could a man want or expect, it 
might be asked ; but there is another side to the 
picture. The treasure is "in earthen vessels M ; 
St. Paul has not already attained, or been already 
made perfect ; the prize of his calling is still before 
him, unreached as yet ; sin is only too real a power 
in his own life ; evil is only too prevalent in the 
world ; he still looks for his Saviour, and longs 
to be " clothed upon " with his " heavenly habita- 
tion/' 2 His joy, his share in the kingdom, his 
oneness with Christ, if real and true and indestruc- 
tible, are at least qualified. If Christ is in us, this 
presence is still only a " hope " of glory; 3 and the 
Church, as is evident from the passages already 
quoted, is neither pure nor complete. Eph. and 
Col. clearly imply growth and progress, and not 
until the Church is co-extensive with the whole of 
humanity, not to say the whole of creation, will 

1 Cf. Robertson, p. 54. 

2 See 2 Cor. iv. 7, v. 2 ; Phil. iii. 12, 20 ; Rom. vii., 
viii. ; Gal. v. 19 ; 1 Cor. iv. 9 ; 2 Cor. i. 8, xi. 23. 

3 Col. i. 27. 

108 



THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST 

the end have been reached ; Christ is still a " Christ 
that is to be." 

In the last group of letters he still looks forward 
to " that day " ; * there is a life " to come," 2 and 
it is " life indeed," " eternal life M ; Christ will 
" appear " again, although he does not say how 
or when ; 3 he desires the younger widows to 
marry, 4 and to take their proper share in the 
world's life and activities ; and he rebukes those 
who say that the Resurrection has already taken 
place. 5 

In his old age, he looks forward to his release 
from the world, and this is so close that the prospect 
of it and the hereafter tend to obscure his conscious- 
ness of present joy and power ; perhaps the weak- 
ness of age and his continued sufferings have made 
him realise more intensely the fact that the promises 
have not yet been fulfilled. Christ is yet to come. 6 

The one professedly apocalyptic book, which 
closes the New Testament (dating from the end of 
the first century a.d., but probably embodying 
some earlier work), shows similar characteristics to 
Our Lord's teaching, though in varying degrees ; 
i.e., it uses the usual language, and if it is more 

1 2 Tim. i. 12, iv. 8. 

2 1 Tim. iv. 8, vi. 19 ; Tit. i. 2, iii. 7. 

3 1 Tim. vi. 14 ; 2 Tim. iv. 1, 8, 18 ; Tit. ii. 13. 

4 1 Tim. v. 14, in striking contrast to 1 Cor. vii. 26. 

5 2 Tim. ii. 18, but contrast Eph. ii. 6 ; Col. ii. 12, 
iii. 1, where he interprets their conversion and baptism as 
a " raising." 

6 Cf. Von Dobschutz, pp. 24, 25. 

109 



THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST 

symbolic and imaginative, describes visions, defines 
historic events and periods of time, it is also sane 
and moderate both in conception and expression ; 
we find the same mingling of actual event and 
abstract principle, where it is not always easy to tell 
which is which, i.e., whether the writer's words 
are intended as a historical reference, or merely as 
an illustration of eternal truth, whether by them 
he wishes to teach history, or religion. 

With regard to the Second Coming of Christ, his 
teaching varies, like that of the Fourth Gospel ; 
sometimes he looks for a final return on traditional 
lines, sometimes he alludes to other comings, of a 
periodical nature, and on spiritual and mystical 
lines. A final return is looked for, and speedily, 1 
and the revelation is of " things which must shortly 
come to pass " ; 2 in xx. is described the " first 
resurrection " of martyrs only, who live and reign 
with Christ a thousand years. After this comes 
the general resurrection and the final judgment, 
followed by the consummation of all things in the 
" new heaven and the new earth " ; it is not stated, 
but it is implied, that this is part of the events 
which will accompany the return of Christ. On 
the other hand, in the Letters to the Seven Churches, 
Christ speaks of coming under the form of visita- 
tions, and not in terms applicable to the Second 
Advent. (See ii. 5 : " Repent ... or else I come to 
thee, and will move thy candlestick out of its 



1 Cf. iii. 11, xxii. 12, 20 : " I come quickly." 

2 i. 1, xxii. 6. 

110 



THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST 

place, except thou repent " ; cf. ii. 16, iii. 3.) And 
He comes where He is welcomed, as well as in 
visitation ; cf. iii. 20 : u Behold, I stand at the 
door and knock ; if any man hear My Voice and 
open the door, I will come in to him, and will sup 
with him, and he with Me." This is thoroughly 
in the spirit of John xiv. 23, and the Messianic 
Banquet may be at least anticipated by the faithful 
soul. That is to say, the conception is spiritual 
and ethical and mystical, and this interpretation 
fits the two concluding chapters at least as well as 
the historic and physical. It is hardly the replacing 
of one material universe by another which is either 
needed or likely to be welcomed. The disabilities 
of this present one may well be removed, either by 
destruction or transformation, they need to be so 
removed before man's bliss can be assured ; but 
it is life on a higher plane which he longs for, and 
this is just what xxi. 1-7 implies. The symbolism 
of xxi. 10-21 denotes perfection, not actual literal 
detail; and xxi. 22-xxii. 5, 11-15 are couched in 
terms of ethical and spiritual import (it is said 
expressly that sun and moon will be no longer 
needed ; just as in xix. 8 the Church is clad in the 
righteous acts of the saints). 1 

1 For the teaching of the Early Church on this matter, 
see Dewick. 



Ill 



CHAPTER IV 

Let us again summarise the points which these 
descriptions and quotations of the teaching of Our 
Lord and His followers about the Second Advent 
have brought to the fore. * Their ideas were 
naturally those of their own day, and were taken 
from the teaching of the apocalyptical writers of 
the first and 2nd centuries B.C., who in turn drew 
their inspiration from and developed the teaching 
of the writers of the Old Testament. In the case 
of both Our Lord and His disciples we can trace a 
spiritualising and a refining process, and two 
clearly defined lines of thought. One of these is 
parallel to the current thought of the day, and 
speaks of a physical or semi-physical return at a 
given though unknown date, with a final judgment 
and inauguration of a reign of bliss for the righteous 
and of unending punishment for the wicked ; the 
other regards the kingdom as having already, in 
a measure at least, arrived, and describes it in 
terms ethical, spiritual, and mystical ; one concept 
is catastrophic, the other evolutionary. It is not 
easy to mark development in the different periods 
of Our Lord's teaching, 2 and the matter is com- 
plicated by questions of criticism as to the record 

1 Cf. Hastings, D B, iii, p. 679b ; Charles, Eschatology, 
p. 366. 

2 Muirhead hints at this, pp. 190 ff., 204 ff. ; cf. Sanday, 
p. 96 ; MacNeile, pp. xxiv, xxv. 

112 



THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST 

and transmission of His words ; but with the rest 
of the New Testament this development and change 
of thought is clearly marked, notably in the case 
of St. Paul. In neither case can it be stated that 
there is a definite doctrine of the Second Advent 
in the New Testament, other than in the most 
general terms ; it was certainly taught that Our 
Lord would come again, but the details as to how 
and when and where vary greatly. In this respect, 
the teaching is parallel to that of the Jewish writers, 
where similar variations and contradictions are 
evident. 1 

Before we come to estimate the respective values 
of these two divergent lines of thought, it is well 
to enquire what led to the gradual rejection by the 
New Testament writers of the traditional material 
view, and to the development of the spiritual and 
mystical interpretation. 

In the first place, it was due to the renewed 
emphasis which Our Lord placed on ethical con- 
siderations. This emphasis was evident enough in 
earlier days, and the Old Testament prophets had 
long given to the world their magnificent conception 
of God as a God of Righteousness, and urged the 
moral claim ; but the legalism of the Pharisees and 
the scholasticism of Rabbinic lore and the new 
Nationalism had done much to deaden it, and to 
obscure its force. The Kingdom of Heaven, said 
Christ, was not a national matter ; it was not the 
exclusive privilege of the Sons of Abraham : neither 

1 Cf. Davidson, p. 155 ; but most writers emphasise this. 

113 



THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST 

was it to be entered and realised by the keeping of 
the precepts of the Torah, and the fulfilling of many 
ceremonial prescriptions : it was the pure in heart 
who should see God, and it was by a man's response 
to God's call, and by his service of God and his 
neighbour that he should be judged and rewarded. 

In the second place, the spiritualising process 
was due to the increasing pressure of evil and the 
heathen world on the consciences and lives of 
believers. Like their predecessors among the Jewish 
apocalyptists, they found this world so increasingly 
evil and unsatisfying, and persecution so constant, 
that they also were driven to conceive the kingdom 
as supra-mundane, and to regard what was spiritual 
as the only good. They had only sensuous and 
material figures in which to clothe their thoughts, 
and only earthly experience upon which to draw ; 
so that their teaching is confusing and uncertain, 
because the eternal cannot be comprised within the 
limits of the temporal, and all analogies are partially 
untrue and therefore misleading. But we can 
see, in a general way, what they meant ; they were 
trying to show that life was essentially ethical and 
spiritual, that the real was not material, that the 
ethically and spiritually good would survive all 
efforts made to destroy it, and that the man who 
was ethically upright and in love with what was 
spiritual would be upheld in his choice, and rewarded 
by being united to the source of all life and goodness, 
with God. 

It was clear, moreover, that the spiritual trans- 
cended the material. In theory they must have 

114 



THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST 

perceived this ; and in experience there was no 
doubt. Our Lord Himself lived perpetually in the 
spiritual sphere ; it was this, and His unfailing 
sense of God's Presence and Power that made Him 
proof against the attacks of sin and the opposition 
of the world. It was this truth that He illustrated 
by His Transfiguration, Resurrection, and Ascen- 
sion, in which His Person showed Its superiority 
to limitations of time, space, and physical corruption. 
When His disciples were with Him, they were 
doubtless conscious of a Power which they had 
not and could not find elsewhere ; it was power 
which He at times transmitted to them at a distance, 
as when the Seventy performed cures ; but they 
could not bear the thought of His leaving them, 
and would have kept Him from risking His life 
among the Jews, and from returning to Heaven. 
This, their need, He realised, and expressly sent 
the Holy Spirit, as He said, to take His place ; 
in the Holy Spirit, He said, He would come again 
to them. 1 

His promise was soon fulfilled. Within seven 
weeks of His Resurrection, within ten days of His 
departure from earth in the Ascension, the Spirit 
came and possessed them at Pentecost. This 
experience was undeniably real and convincing to 
them ; it was attested outwardly by the noise, 
the tongues of fire, the " gifts of tongues " (what- 
ever these were), and by the inception and growth 
of the Church. It is worth while dwelling a little 

1 John xiv. 18. 

115 



THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST 

on this phenomenon, the coming of the Holy 
Spirit ; because in it we shall find a good deal 
to elucidate the problem before us. The Book of 
Acts has been rightly named the " Gospel of the 
Holy Spirit," and it reveals how intensely real to 
the Early Church were His Person and Power, a 
fact seen also from time to time in the Epistles. 
Our Lord had spoken of His, the Spirit's, coming 
in terms of present and actual experience, and as 
to be realised in the immediate future, 1 and His 
words were fully upheld by events. 

The description of the Day of Pentecost in Acts 
ii. clearly shows the reality of the experience, both 
to the body of the disciples themselves, and also to 
their hearers. And frequently are events and 
actions ascribed to the Holy Spirit's influence. 
St. Peter is " filled with the Holy Spirit " before 
he makes his explanation to the Sanhedrim ; and 
after their trial and release, as the disciples were 
assembled for prayer, " the place was shaken 
wherein they were gathered together ; and they 
were all filled with the Holy Spirit/ ' 2 And follow- 
ing on this experience, the writer describes how 
great was the effect on their lives, so that they 
instituted a voluntary communism, and the Apostles 
gave their witness " with great power," power seen 
most notably, to take an oft-quoted instance, in 
the transformation of the impetuous and uncertain 
Simon into Peter, the Rock, and in the miracles of 
healing frequently recorded. Over and over again 



1 John xiv.-xvi. 

2 iv. 8, 31. 



116 



THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST 

is it said " He was filled with the Holy Spirit/' 
as of St. Stephen, 1 St. Paul, 2 the disciples, 3 or 
that an action was commanded by the Holy Spirit ; 
as when He tells St. Philip to join himself to the 
Ethiopian Eunuch, and later takes him away ; 4 
tells St. Peter to go to Cornelius, making no dis- 
tinction between Jew and Gentile ; 5 reveals to 
Agabus the coming of a great famine, and the 
imprisonment of St. Paul; 6 orders St. Paul and 
St. Barnabas to undertake a tour of missionary 
work ; 7 guides the council at Jerusalem to their 
decision on the thorny question of the Mosaic 
Law ; 8 directs St. Paul on his route ; 9 testifies to 
him that everywhere " bonds and afflictions " 
await him ; 10 helps him in solving the current 
difficulties of his work ; n appoints the bishops to 
their charges. 12 

Not only was the power of the Spirit revealed in 
beneficence and changed lives and daily guiding ; 
it was seen, also, in judgment. Ananias and 
Sapphira are struck dead for their dishonesty, for 
" lying to the Holy Spirit " and for " tempting the 
Spirit of the Lord " ; 13 and Elymas is struck with 
blindness ; 13 at Corinth one offender is formally 
delivered " to Satan for the destruction of the 
flesh, that the Spirit may be saved in the day of the 
Lord Jesus," by " the power of the Lord Jesus." 15 

1 vii. 55. 2 ix. 17, 21, 22, cf. ix. 31. 3 xiii. 52. 

4 viii. 29, 39. 5 xi. 12. 6 xi. 28, xxi. 11. 

7 xiii. 2. 8 xv. 28. 9 xvi. 6, 7, xxi. 4. 

10 xx. 23. " 1 Cor. vii. 40. 12 xx. 28. 

13 v. 1-11. 14 xiii. 9. 15 1 Cor. v. 4. 

117 



THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST 

The same power and Presence was revealed 
visibly, both to believers and unbelievers alike. 
St. Peter can appeal in the Sanhedrim to the Holy 
Spirit as evidence for the truth of the Christian 
claim ; x at Confirmations it is evident that some 
outward sign was given as well as the inward 
grace, 2 doubtless the same phenomena to which 
St. Paul alludes in Rom. xv. 19 (those things 
" which Christ wrought through me ... in the 
power of the Holy Spirit "), and those discussed at 
length by him in 1 Cor. xii.-xiv. 

It was this newly-found power which so trans- 
formed the lives of Christians, and transformed 
life for them. They proved in actual experience 
the truth of their Master's words ; they were 
" born again from above " ; there was " a new 
creation " ; the " Bread of Life," and the " Water 
of Life " were both constant and more than satisfy- 
ing ; He gave them above all that they dared ask 
or think. And this fresh, novel, and absolutely 
convincing experience they ascribed solely to the 
coming of the Holy Spirit ; He was, indeed, to 
them an ever-present companion and guide, the 
source of their knowledge and inspiration, but, 
above all, the giver of that power which enabled 
them to face, resist, and overcome the world, and 
the mediator of a life which was " life indeed/ ' 3 

Is it permissible to identify this coming of the 

1 v. 32. 

2 viii. 18, xix. 6, cf. x. 44. 

3 Cf. Von. Dobschiitz, pp. 21, 22. 

118 



THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST 

Holy Spirit with the Parousia of Christ, to see in 
Pentecost the fulfilment of His words about the 
coming of the Kingdom ? Evidence has already 
been adduced 1 for giving a present instead of a 
future meaning to those words, and if the suggestion 
can be upheld it would provide a welcome relief 
from weary longings and discontent, do much to 
rebut the charge of " other-worldliness " levelled 
against the Church by the world, and also provide 
Christian people with, in many cases, a much 
needed stimulus, as well as resolving the difficulties 
connected with our Advent Hymns. 

Let us again recall and emphasise what has been 
said already about growth and development. It 
can be traced steadily throughout the teaching of 
the prophets in the Old Testament, in the Apoca- 
lyptists ; and in Our Lord's case there is a remark- 
able development and refining of the traditional 
teaching. His tendency is from the particular to 
the general, from the material to the ethical and 
spiritual, from small issues to great ones, from 
narrow to world-wide. The same tendencies are 
clearly traceable in the rest of the New Testament, 
side by side with the gradually weakening con- 
ceptions of traditional Judaism. And it must be 
remembered also, what the traditional Judaism 
really implied. We do it great wrong if we interpret 
it as intended au pied de la lettre. The strange 
terms and fancies of Jewish apocalyptic were due 
to the desire to express unworldly and non-material 

1 Pp. 81 ff. 

119 



THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST 

conceptions ; * they themselves imply and desire 
a spiritual and transcendental interpretation. Such 
thoughts like the 1,000 years, the regular cycles, the 
pre-determined periods, the mathematical element, 
such as are met with frequently — (cf. Ezek. iv. 6 ; 
Dan. ix. 2, 24, xi. 29, xii. 7, 11 ; 4 Ezra iv. 36 
(and note), vii. 30, 43, xiv. 11 (12 " periods ") ; 

1 Enoch xc. 1, 5, xci. 12-17 (10 " weeks "), xciii. ; 

2 Bar. xxvii. 1, liii. (12 " clouds) ; T. Levi xvii. 11 
(7 "weeks"); Sib. iv. 47 (" generations "). In 
1 Enoch the world lasts 10,000 years ; in 2 Enoch, 
7,000 years) — all imply perfection, eternity : and 
the notions of a new heaven and a new earth clearly 
mean that of a universe fashioned on a higher 
plane than this, above the usual limits of matter 
and space. There is no doubt that the Kingdom 
of Heaven, both in Jewish thought and Our Lord's 
teaching, is something transcendental. 2 Neither 
may we neglect the ethical element which is no less 
prominent. A religion which could assert, at a 
later date : "If Israel repent but for one day, 
forthwith will the Messiah come," 3 cannot be 
charged with the accusation of materialism or 
legalism as its sole characteristic. Jewish thought 
was itself growing more refined, more ethical, more 
spiritual, when Our Lord came to crown it. The 
contradictions and absurdities of apocalyptic proved 
that its development was still going on ; and as 



1 See pp. 55 ff. 

2 Cf. Tyrrell, Christianity at the Cross Roads, p. 114. 

3 Pesikta, 163b. 

120 



THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST 

Dr. Charles says, x apocalyptic passed over into and 
was superseded by Christianity, while legalism 
developed into Rabbinism. The dryness of the 
latter proves the existence in apocalyptic of a 
permanent value, and its (the latter's) need of 
further development and progress. 

This development and progress were not denied 
to either Christ's Gospel or Judaism. 

At Pentecost, and in the days subsequent to it, 
was a manifestation of divine power, unparalleled 
and unsuspected, which influenced men and women 
of all ages, races, grades, capacities. It conveyed 
to them a sense of power, and of joy, which they 
had not experienced before, and never entirely left 
them. It was proved in the same sort of way as 
it had been in the Person of Jesus of Nazareth : 
they were able to work miracles of healing, in some 
cases to raise the dead : they were able to face 
torture and death for the sake of their Master ; 
their preaching had marvellous results ; men's 
lives were transformed. The presence of the 
kingship of God was no less real now than in the 
days of Jesus ; and it was of infinitely greater and 
wider extent. There was no re-organisation of 
human society, no over-throwing of human author- 
ities, no shifting of the " balance of power " ; there 
was no cataclysm of nature, and no visible throne 
of judgment, with its attendant angels. But a 
new authority was recognised, and honoured, which 
transcended human authorities ; nature bowed her 

1 Pseudep. II, p. vii. 

121 



THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST 

head to this Power : there were actual outward 
signs of His Presence, and still more of His working ; 
and each man's heart and conscience became his 
court of trial, and he registered his own verdict, 
when he faced and answered the question : " Is 
Jesus Lord, or Anathema ? " x 

This was, indeed, a reality ; and entirely in 
keeping with Our Lord's words. Not only was it 
the direct and speedy fulfilment of His words about 
the Holy Spirit, but it gave the answer to others, 
that those who stood by should not taste death 
until they had seen the kingdom of God come with 
power, 2 and that " all these things " should happen 
within the present generation. 3 Still more was it a 
distinct advance, the logical and natural outcome 
of His teaching ; it was a spiritual phenomenon, 
which completed the process of the transference of 
man's interest in life from the material to the 
spiritual, of which His Resurrection Body was the 
stepping-stone. " It is expedient for you that I 
go away ; for if I go not away, the Comforter will 
not come unto you," i.e., it was the life of the soul, 
and His Presence and Rule there, that Christ 
would teach as the one essential. Not that man 
had neglected the spiritual ; but it was part of 
Christ's mission to demonstrate that the spiritual 
was the only reality, transcending if utilising the 

1 1 Cor. xii. 3. 

2 Mk. ix. 1 ; the variations in the other Gospels do 
not affect the point. 

3 Matt. xxiv. 34, cf. x. 23 : " Ye shall not have gone 
through the cities of Israel, till the Son of Man be come." 

122 



THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST 

material ; His Resurrection Body was, humanly 
speaking, necessary in order to convince His dis- 
ciples of His identity and uninterrupted existence ; x 
His Ascension demonstrated to them (in the simple 
obvious way which they were alone able to com- 
prehend) that He had returned to " Heaven," the 
spiritual sphere ; and Pentecost showed them and 
the world that His Kingdom, which He had already 
claimed as present, was no less present or effective, 
even if He were not Himself visibly and bodily 
present, rather even that it was more widely spread 
and more effective than it had been heretofore. 

It may be objected that this means a " confound- 
ing of Persons " ; but we must bear in mind that 
Our Lord practically identified the coming of the 
Holy Spirit with His own coming, as reported by 
St. John, cf. xiv. 16 ff. : " I will pray the Father, 
and He shall give you another Helper, that He may 
be with you for ever, even the Spirit of truth ; . . . 

1 It is a mistake to argue that Our Lord's Resurrection 
Body implies that we shall have similar bodies " in heaven/ ' 
We have not the same necessity as He, and His Body was 
a temporary expedient, partaking of both the material 
and the spiritual elements, designed to help the disciples 
pass from the one to the other. That it was only a tem- 
porary expedient is seen by His non-appearance after the 
Ascension. The " Resurrection Body " of St. Paul in 
1 Cor. xv. means a medium of self-expression and self- 
manifestation in social intercourse. That life in the 
Kingdom is social is evident from many passages ; and as 
we cannot conceive intercourse without a " body/' he is 
driven to use the contradictory phrase " spiritual body " 
in order to express this truth. A purely spiritual existence 
we cannot, of course, as yet understand. (Tyrrell, op. cit., 
p. 150.) 

123 



THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST 

He abideth with you, and shall be in you ... I will 
not leave you fatherless {lit., orphans), I come 
unto you." This passage and others in the same 
section clearly bring out the unity of the Trinity, 
so that whatever can be predicated of the Godhead 
can be predicated of each, and the working of the 
Spirit is as much a part of the kingship of God as 
were Christ's miracles or His Resurrection. * 

If it be objected, again, why did not the Early 
Church, then, hold that the kingdom had already 
come, it must be answered that they did so hold 
(see the passages quoted above Ch. Ill) ; the fact of 
the Church's acceptance of the Fourth Gospel 
shows the same ; and the reason why they still 
looked for the visible return of Christ with the 
clouds of Heaven was that He had used those and 
similar words, and they had not yet been able to 
dissociate His inner thought from the language in 
which He clothed it ; their experiences were too 
overwhelming, their problems too urgent, for them 
to reflect as yet deeply as to what He really meant ; 
and the traditional views were too deeply rooted 
in their minds to be lightly laid by (cf. the import- 
ance given to eschatology in the Gospels, and the 
materialist background of the question in Acts 
i. 6). 2 And it ill becomes us to blame or despise 
them, if it has taken us so many centuries to 
separate husk from kernel. 3 

1 Cf. Foundations, p. 159. 

2 Cf. Hastings, D C G, ii., p. 438a. 

3 On the question whether the fall of Jerusalem marked 
the end of the pre-Messianic age, see Terry, p. 248. 

124 



THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST 

For that is the task of every student of the 
Gospels, to discover if he can what was the inner 
thought in Our Lord's mind, and the permanent 
truth which His words were meant to express. 
Literalism has often been condemned, but its 
opposite has not always been carried out as 
thoroughly or as consistently as it should be. 

And what is the kernel of Our Lord's teaching 
about His Second Coming ? The husk we have 
already seen much of (in Ch. I). Let us repeat 
the traditional concepts ; a Day of the Lord, the 
coming of a Son of Man who is also the Son, or at 
least the representative, of God, a judgment, 
rewards and punishments, the kingship of God, a 
renewed heaven and earth, bliss and torment. 1 
Clearly, the Day of God 2 stands for a crisis, when 
the never-ending conflict of good and evil comes to 
a head, and events take a definite turn, God asserting 
and upholding His sovereignty. (The portents pre- 
dicted in the natural world are meant as evidences 
of God's power and presence, and as signs of the 
importance of the times.) Normally, one would 
not think of more than one " Day of God " ; but 
experience shows that all human life may be divided 
into " ages, epochs, eras," in which the tendencies 
which reveal themselves in human nature and 
history work and develop and grow, until matters 
come to a head, and two conflicting ideals (not 
always one entirely right and the other entirely 

1 See above, pp. 58 ff. 

2 The concept is discussed by Kennedy, p. 175 ; and 
E. Bibl., pp. 1348 ff. 

125 



THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST 

wrong) stand face to face, and in conflict the issue 
is settled one way or the other, for good or for 
evil. In Israelitish history there are the Patriarchal 
Period, the time of the Sojourn in Egypt, the Exodus 
and Wandering, the Judges, the Single and the 
Dual Monarchies, the Captivities, the Return, the 
Persian, Greek, and Roman rules, and so on. In 
English history we talk of the Saxon and Norman 
periods, the Plantagenets and the Tudors, the 
Caroline and Jacobean periods, the Georges, the 
Victorian Era. The termini are not always easily 
definable, and the issues are not always clear (as 
when the Norman period commences with the 
Battle of Hastings in 1066, or the liberties of the 
people with Magna Carta in 1215, or the breach 
with Rome in 1537) ; but the tendencies are clearly 
marked when viewed over a wide period, and it 
may be truly said that each of these " ages " are 
" consummated " or wound up to their conclusion, 
by some definite act or acts on the part of the 
leading men of the time. These acts, whether they 
be battles, or statutes, or speeches, or books, or 
deaths, or the inauguration of societies, are the 
landmarks of history, and each in a sense is a Day 
of God. Not that necessarily any moral issue is 
involved, or to any unusual extent. Sometimes 
there is ; the moral issue of August 4th, 1914, will 
never be forgotten, or of June 15th, 1215. Undoubt- 
edly, as Dr. Muirhead says, 1 the destruction of 
Jerusalem marked the ending of a world-order, 

1 Pp. 135 ff. 

126 



THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST 

because then Christianity challenged and superseded 
Judaism, and a new development supervened, 
Judaism having its last chance, failing, and going 
off into the barren tracts of Rabbinism. Whenever 
eternal principles of right and wrong are at issue, 
it is, of course, a Day of God. But in all human 
activity God has His interest ; and whether the 
decision be for human welfare or the reverse, He 
is no less concerned in the " Day." The phrase is 
most appropriate where the issue is clearest, as a 
matter of right and wrong, and where the result is 
to uphold the right, to the subsequent progress of 
the world. x 

We must not be too literal in our application of 
the word " day " ; but what could have been a 
greater Day of God than the time when His own 
Son accepted the limitations of human life, faced 
evil and conquered it, faced the world and its 
persecution, faced death and triumphed, and 
vindicated Himself by sending His Spirit, with the 
transforming of human beings into His own likeness 
and the transferring to them of His own power ? 
Humanity has accepted His version of the " Day of 
the Lord " by dating her history by the traditional 
date of His Birth. 

A Judgment. Jews and Christians are not alone 
in this conception. All the world over, among 
primitive peoples as well as advanced, are found 
notions of a final judgment, when the good shall be 



1 Cf. the interpretation of history given by Bp. Walpole, 
Ch. iv; Foundations, p. 121. 

127 



THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST 

rewarded and the wicked punished. In Egyptian 
religion, Osiris is judge ; in Buddhism, Yama is 
king of righteousness, and before him men give an 
account of their lives ; in the Classics, we have 
Minos and Rhadamanthus ; and the thought 
appears in Zoroastrianism, in Borneo, among the 
North American Indians, in Brahmanism, in the 
Greek Mysteries, and in the teaching of Pythagoras. 
It is implied in the conceptions of the Aeschylean 
drama. It is involved in the fact of human free- 
will, for there can be no responsibility without a 
calling to account. But why should we deem 
ourselves limited to a single final judgment ? Of 
course, we unburden ourselves of the apocalyptic 
details of the Great Assize ; it is the fact of the 
judgment that the Church is committed to, not to 
any particular mode of its administration. As a 
matter of fact, we know from experience that there 
are many days of judgment in human lives, both of 
nations and of individuals. When a people commit 
themselves definitely to a policy, then and there 
they pass judgment on themselves as wise or 
foolish, as right or wrong ; and on such a decision 
may turn the whole future of the nation ; it will 
be rewarded or punished according to its decision ; 
what it receives may be either material or moral 
loss or gain, or it may be both ; in any case, some- 
thing will happen to it ; it will reap the harvest 
which it has sown. There is more than one crisis 
in the life of a man (and does not crisis, Kptvcs, mean 
judgment?). He judges himself, and his verdict 
is recorded (if not by a Dore angel in a material 

128 



THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST 

book, at all events by the Power who controls 
affairs and traceable in the working out of those 
affairs), when he chooses his profession, his wife, 
his home, his friends, his recreations ; and, still 
more, when he decides on the moral issues of life, 
and takes sides, as he is compelled to do repeatedly, 
with right or wrong. 1 

Is it permissible to assign the title of the " Last 
Day " to the time when he, or a nation, make the 
decision which finally decides the tone and tendency 
of their life, when they definitely choose right or 
wrong, when they face clearly and honestly the 
issue : " Christ, or Self and the World " ? There 
is such one day of decision ; there is such one 
turning-point in life, even if there be other lesser 
decisions which lead up to or confirm it. There is 
a time when a man first becomes aware, clearly 
and without any possibility of mistake, that he has 
got to choose, and does choose, between right and 
wrong, and by this one decision his whole life is 
governed. Is not this the counterpart to the 
preaching of the Gospel to all nations, and the 
coming of the end ? {i.e., a man hears the call and 
challenge of Christ, either in the moral law, or the 
message of the Church [if in a Christian country], 
and some time or other he makes the decision) . 

Once to every man and nation comes the challenge 

to decide. 
In the strife of Truth with Falsehood, for the good 

or evil side ; 

1 Cf. Kennedy, p. 198 ; Winstanley, p. 373. 

129 



THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST 

Some great cause, God's new Messiah, off ring each 

the bloom or blight, 
Parts the goats upon the left hand, and the sheep 

upon the right, 
And the choice goes by for ever 'twixt that darkness 

and that light. 1 

He may have other chances, and he generally 
does ; but must there not be one deciding oppor- 
tunity, to which all others are subservient ? Perhaps 
this helps us to understand the difficult passages, 
Heb. vi. 4f£., 1 John v. 16 ("As touching those 
who were once enlightened and tasted of the 
heavenly gift, and were made partakers of the 
Holy Spirit, and tasted the good word of God, and 
the powers of the age to come, and then fell away, 
it is impossible to renew them again unto repen- 
tance/ 1 — " There is a sin unto death : not concern- 
ing this do I say that he should make request ") ; 
and perhaps this final decision, when made against 
the right (that is, if a man is really capable of 
making such a decision ; its possibility is undoubted, 
but hardly its probability), is the sin against the 
Holy Spirit, and unforgivable. Cf. : " The ' end ' 
whensoever it may come, means for Him the time 
when the process of historical development is 
complete, when characters have become fixed, and 
men are what they will be." 2 

Thus, Christ's coming is perpetual. The actual 
Second Coming was at Pentecost (the Early Church 
called the Holy Spirit Christ's " Vicar;" cf. Tert. 

1 J. R. Lowell. 

2 Bruce, p. 318. 

130 



THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST 

de Praescr. xiii., following John xiv. 16, 26) ; but 
He comes repeatedly to men in all the crises of life. 
He comes in the moral challenge then presented ; 
He comes when the heavens are opened to a man's 
soul and he has visions of God ; He comes in the 
ideals of youth, and, indeed, of all ages ; He comes 
whenever the conditions of Pentecost are repeated, 
when a man receives or realises the receipt of the 
Holy Spirit, either conveyed non-Sacramentally, or 
in Baptism and Confirmation ; He comes in the 
Holy Communion ; He comes in answer to prayer, 
when His presence and power are claimed by the 
devout soul ; He comes in visitation and in oppor- 
tunity, in vocation and in trial ; He comes when 
He upholds, working through history and the 
normal events of life, the man's judgments of 
himself, and awards reward or punishment accord- 
ingly, whether material or spiritual, leading to bliss 
or the reverse. * Not always is the coming foreseen 
or expected ; it is usually the reverse. " In an 
hour when ye think not the Son of Man cometh." 
Those who have made history have seldom been 
aware of it at the time ; so that the warning is 
always needed — " Be ye ready, and watch." 

And in all these comings He asserts His kingship ; 
for He could not come and operate thus unless all 
power were given Him in heaven and earth. C/. 
Stevens, American Journal of Theology, Oct., 1902, 
p. 677, quoted by Dr. Kennedy, p. 187 : " As the 
kernel of the teaching about the Parousia is the 

1 Cf. Winstanley, pp. 363 ff . ; Westcott, Historic Faith, 
pp. 9 ff. ; Encycl. Britannica, ix, p. 764. 

131 



THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST 

assurance of the triumph of Christ's kingdom, and 
that concerning the Resurrection is the certainty 
of immortality, so the teaching concerning judgment 
centres in the principle that human life and action 
bring forth fruit after their kind, and that every 
man shall receive from God his just recompense 
of reward." (And Charles, Eschatology, pp. 387, 8.) 
Kennedy, p. 171, aptly quotes J. Weiss : " The 
essential point in the preaching of Jesus is not the 
greater or lesser nearness of the crisis, but the 
thought that the Kingdom of God now comes with 
absolute certainty/ ' 

The kingship is implied in the portents foretold 
in the natural world, and in the concept of a new 
heaven and earth. The human mind can hardly 
conceive, or at least cannot express, existence 
except in terms of the visible universe ; and the 
notion of a renewed heaven and earth was put 
forward to denote life on a higher plane and to a 
fuller degree, and freed from obvious current 
limitations ; this was life as ascribed to God, and 
as revealed in Christ ; His coming conveys this life 
to men ; hence the " conditions " of life are trans- 
formed. x So that the same thought really underlies 
the figures in which Christ's " coming " is presented ; 
it is called a kingship, and salvation, and heaven, 
and life ; and it means happiness for the good and 
unhappiness for the bad ; it is necessarily expressed 
in terms and concepts familiar to man's experience ; 
but the central thought is the same, and perhaps the 

1 Cf. Beet, p. 106. 

132 



THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST 

most satisfying description is that of the Fourth 
Gospel: "Life." 

There was no doubt of Christ's supremacy at 
Pentecost, or in the days of the Early Church ; * 
and in every age since have men owned Him as 
King, and His kingship has been shown in the 
conviction of sin by the Holy Spirit, in changed 
lives, in lives devoted to His work of healing and 
preaching " the Gospel of the Kingdom." If the 
Church and the Kingdom cannot be identified, if 
they are not coterminous, at least the kingdom is 
manifested in and is extended by the Church. 2 

This perpetual coming of Christ finds illustration 
in the well-known commonplace, that " History 
repeats itself," and in the equally common sentiment 
that there are no days like " the good old days." 
Examples are superfluous ; but it is well to give 
the reason for these two persistent thoughts. And 
the reason is this : that human nature, and the 
subject-matter, so to speak, of human life, never 
vary, but are always constant. Their combinations 
and permutations are endless in their variety ; the 
externals of life are for ever changing and develop- 
ing, and are for ever being mistaken by the men 
of each generation for progress. But deep down 
the elements of life do not vary ; there are good and 
evil, God and man, the divine will and human free- 
will, the divine nature and human nature, and 
what goes to make up the material world and human 



1 Cf. p. 108. 

2 Cf. Robertson, p. 57. 

133 



THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST 

society, through which operate the divine purpose 
and human activities. And the eternal tussle of 
good versus evil never slackens ; God's purpose 
never varies, nor His Love and desire to draw man 
into it ; and man, although in situations and under 
conditions infinitely varying and never quite the 
same, has to face the same temptation and hear 
the same call. It is not strange that his responses 
to these should resemble each other, though outward 
conditions and times vary. * 

And in every age there are those who come to 
the fore, and distinguish themselves for their 
excellence. And because they excel, they in many 
cases survive, and their influence is greater and 
more lasting ; while lesser men disappear and are 
forgotten. At bottom, no one is better necessarily 
than another, although some generations will 
always be better than others ; the laudator temporis 
acti merely remembers the good and forgets the 
inferior ; and comparing past with present, the 
inferior (always the more numerous) of his own day 
force themselves upon his notice, so that he argues 
(falsely) that in the old times the proportions were 
not so unequal. The praise of what is " old- 
fashioned " is based upon just the same mistake. 
The excellent in each age are remembered, and 
compared regretfully with the present imagined lack 
of excellence ; and because the outward setting 
of the two ages varies, the excellence is (falsely) 
ascribed to the previous age. As a matter of fact, 

1 C/. Bp. Walpole, p. 38. 

134 



THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST 

the excellent of one age would excel in any and all ; 
and no age is without those who excel. They are 
always visible to those who have eyes to see, and 
they are seen, in great contrast, when their own 
age has passed or is passing away. 

Progress, as generally understood, is sadly mis- 
conceived. " The European talks of progress 
because, by the aid of a few scientific discoveries, 
he has established a society which has mistaken 
comfort for civilisation. ,, l " The great test of 
progress is not mechanical or scientific discovery, 
or even social conditions improved by legislation, 
but happiness resting on virtue." 2 

In the outward things of human culture and 
civilisation, in the organisation of human affairs 
and the development of bodily powers and activ- 
ities, the twentieth century cannot, of course, 
compare with the eighteenth, let alone the first. 
But has any advance in the spheres of religion 
and ethics ever been made upon the dictum of 
Samuel : " To obey is better than sacrifice, and 
to hearken than the fat of rams ; for rebellion is 
as the sin of witchcraft, and stubbornness is as 
idolatry and teraphim " ; 3 upon Micah's words : 
" What doth the Lord require of thee, but to do 
justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly 
with thy God ? " ; 4 or upon Deut. vi. 4 : " Hear, 

1 Disraeli. 

2 The Faith and the War, p. 69, cf. 110, 120 ; and cf. 
Wordsworth, Sonnet 46. 

3 1 Sam. xv. 22. 

4 vi. 8. 

135 



THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST 

O Israel : the Lord our God is one Lord : and 
thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thine 
heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might "? 
Such standards cannot be bettered, and any age 
can rise to the same height, and any man, just as 
history has recently shown it possible for even 
nations to revert to the level of the days of the 
Book of Judges. Progress is not a matter of age 
or time ; it is a matter of inward attitude ; and 
consists in the approach of men and of peoples 
to the standards laid down for all time ; they pro- 
gress according as they approximate to these 
standards, and in proportion to the number of 
those who do so individually. 

This explains why the Bible maintains its force 
and its power ; why, in spite of its obvious limita- 
tions of time and space, of civilisation and culture, 
it still retains its appeal and its hold on men's 
minds ; why it is a Book for all time, as well as 
the record of many ages. It is true of it what 
William James said of mystical classics, that they 
" have neither birthday nor native land ; their 
speech antedates language, and they do not grow 
old." This is why Jesus Christ is truly Son of 
Man, and why Christianity is the truly Catholic 
faith, for all men, all times, and all places ; because 
He bears witness to and upholds eternal standards 
and values, which find their response in the heart 
and conscience of men. 1 



1 Cf. Rashdall, Conscience and Christ, Lecture I, esp. 
p. 30. 

136 



THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST 

And the same truth explains another strange 
phenomenon, which bears closely on our subject, 
the fact that prophecy and apocalyptic are for 
ever being viewed as fulfilled in the present genera- 
tion. Human ingenuity must have gone near to 
exhausting itself in its endeavours to show how the 
Book of Daniel or the second chapter of 2 Thessa- 
lonians have been fulfilled in each successive age 
of Christian history. The desire to obtain precise 
fulfilment first found expression in the Synoptists' 
application of Our Lord's words to the destruction 
of Jerusalem, and their mention of the portents at 
His death, and the last two years have seen a large 
recrudescence of the same endeavour. The " Man 
of Sin " has been successively regarded as Nero, 
Julian the Apostate, Mahomet, Luther, Calvin, the 
Pope, Napoleon I, and, doubtless, the Kaiser of 
to-day. The " thousand years " of Rev. xx. has 
given rise to the wildest chilisatic speculations. 1 
Dan. xii. 4 (" many shall run to and fro, and know- 
ledge shall be increased ") has been interpreted in 
terms of motor-cars and Education Bills. And, 
indeed, it often needs no ingenuity to see the 
application of a prophecy. Attention has been 
called recently to 4 Ezra xi. (the vision of the 
Eagle coming up out of the sea, and condemned 
by the Lion speaking with a man's voice), and its 
curious and striking appropriateness to the two 
European nations represented in current symbolism 
by those two animals ; cf. vv. 40 ff. — 

1 See Dahle, p. 230. 

137 



THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST 

" Thou hast wielded power over the world with 

great terror, 
And over all the inhabited earth with grievous 

oppression ; 
Thou hast dwelt so long in the civilised world 

with fraud, 
And hast judged the earth (but) not with 

faithfulness ; 
For thou hast afflicted the meek, 

and oppressed the peaceable ; 
Thou hast hated the upright, 

and loved liars ; 
Thou hast destroyed the strongholds of the 

fruitful, and laid low the walls of such as 

did thee no harm — 
And so thine insolence hath ascended to the 

Most High and thy pride to the Mighty 

One. 
Then the Most High regarded his times — 

and lo ! they were ended; 
And his ages — 

(and) they were fulfilled. 
Therefore shalt thou disappear, O Eagle, 

and thy horrible wings, 

and thy little wings most evil, 

Thy harm-dealing heads, 

Thy hurtful talons, 

and all thy worthless body ! 
And so the whole earth, freed from thy 

violence, shall be refreshed again, and hope 

for the judgment and mercy of Him that 

made her." 

138 



THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST 

Another passage, of painful fitness, is Sib. iii. 
520 ff. : " But whensoever a numerous barbarian 
race shall fall upon the Greeks, it shall destroy 
many heads of picked men, and many of men's 
fat flocks shall they ravish, and herds of horses and 
mules and lowing oxen. And well-built houses 
shall they lawlessly burn with fire. And many 
miserable wights shall they carry by force as slaves 
to another land, children and tender deep-girdled 
women, snatched from their chambers and with 
delicate feet falling forward. They shall see them 
in bonds at the hand of strange-tongued foes suffering 
every horror of outrage/ ' 

And apart from passages of this character and 
the curiosities of their historical adaptations, who 
will deny the perennial appropriateness of the 
words of Isaiah and Amos and others, when dealing 
with the social and political problems and short- 
comings of their own age ? They have supplied 
preachers in every age and country with themes, 
and reformers with inspiration, because they deal 
not only with local conditions but with eternal 
verities. 

Such prophecy is easily applied in most ages, 
because " history repeats itself," because human 
nature is what it is, because the eternal conflict of 
good and evil never slackens, and from time to 
time breaks out and convulses the world, evil 
impersonating itself in some human leader, and the 
evil passions of men being let loose in war and all 
its attendant horrors. The passages are always 



THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST 

applicable (in general terms), because man's con- 
viction that right must win never fails, nor does 
his faith in God ever desert him. And herein lies 
the permanent value of eschatology, that it arouses 
and fixes man's attention on these essentials of 
life, the Supremacy of God, man's Responsibility 
and consequent Judgment, the sole reality of the 
transcendental and spiritual, the possibility of 
perfection, of the realisation of ideals, of " eternal 
life," and of the final victory of good over evil. 
Eschatology is, therefore, a necessary part of the 
Christian creed, as both a stimulus, a warning, a 
hope, an encouragement, and an inspiration. x 
(Note. — It is man's instinctive sense of this that 
has given rise to another commonplace : " Things 
must get worse before they are better " ; i.e., men 
realise that " both must grow together until the 
harvest," that evil and good must each run their 
course, and that a crisis is necessary before the 
issue is decided. " When these things begin to 
come to pass, look up, and lift up your heads ; 
because your redemption draweth nigh." " The 
darkest hour is just before the dawn.") 

1 Cf. Tyrrell, Christianity at the Cross Roads, pp. 173, 
205-6 ; and above, p. 57. 



140 



CHAPTER V 

Although hinted at, 1 we have not yet reached 
that which will solve many of the difficulties 
connected with this question. The New Testament 
speaks of the kingdom as both present and future ; 
and undoubtedly at Pentecost and subsequently 
the kingship of Christ was evident in a very marked 
degree. It has been suggested that the Parousia 
is a perpetual process, conditioned by moral and 
spiritual factors more than by time and historic 
sequence. Is not the time-element the stumbling- 
block and the hindrance to our interpretation of 
Christ's words ? Undoubtedly, His disciples thought 
in terms of time ; witness their question : " When 
shall those things be ? " and it is this that has 
caused the seeming confusion in their writings, and 
the concurrent presentation of the kingdom as both 
present and future. They could not evade the 
moral and spiritual ; neither could they divest 
themselves of the limitations of time. But who 
can ? At least, who can do so entirely ? All our 
life is cut up into time-sequences ; if these periods 
grow longer as we get older, it is no less a fact that 
our thoughts and acts are dominated by time ; it 
is one of the dimensions which bound our life. 
At times there are those who, like St. Paul, are 
rapt, and dwell for a while in a higher sphere ; 
and St. John's teaching generally possesses the 



1 P. 68. 



141 



THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST 

feature of timelessness in a remarkable degree ; 
but even they are compelled to come to earth again 
and to submit to the limitations of time and space 
and matter. 

Yet there is no doubt that if we can eliminate 
time from our thoughts, we get close to the heart 
of the matter ; we a see life steadily and see it 
whole," sub specie aeternitatis ; we approach very 
near to the point of view of God. 1 " We think 
too much of time and space in connection with 
eternal life. The I aims at elevation above all 
such conditions, so as to be more closely united 
with the eternal. Its development is in the feeling 
of such independence as tends to make it more 
and more a self-conscious entity beyond the reach 
of outward limit ations." 2 Time is a limitation, 
undoubtedly, but we gradually pass beyond it. 
The child's outlook is bounded by lesson-time and 
playtime, school-time and holiday. The mature 
man thinks of youth and maturity and old age 
(i.e., he uses longer periods, when thinking of him- 
self) ; and he takes a wide view of history and 
human activity, extending even to such vague and 
vast periods like " Ice," " Stone," and " Protozoic " 
ages or epochs. There is no doubt that, as we get 

1 Cf. Muirhead, p. 107, who says that the ethical nature 
of Christ's teaching removes the time-element ; it is " for 
all time " and beyond and above time, and it is this fact 
which makes Our Lord's teaching more than an inter- 
imsethik ; cf. Rashdall, Conscience and Christ, pp. 62 fit., 71 ; 
Foakes-Jackson, The Faith and the War, p. 200, Essay by 
Mr. Emmet. 

2 Davidson, p. 159. 

142 



THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST 

old, we become less sensible to the lapse of time ; 
it means less to us, we are less affected by it. And 
this because earth's joys are felt to be limited and 
unsatisfying, because we see deeper and rise higher ; 
we prove the truth of St. Paul's words that the 
things seen are temporal, but the unseen eternal ; 
we, in a sense, rise above and transcend time, 
because we both outgrow it as well as escape from 
its bondage. The truly devout soul, in contrast 
to the " natural man," who only outgrows time 
without escaping its bondage, experiences what he 
has probably already tasted in earlier days, and on 
a lower plane, and finds in the bliss of the divine 
love that time is no more — 

With thee conversing I forget all time, 
All seasons and their change. 

That is to say, time is no more, because we have 
risen above it ; it is ended by being transcended ; 
and what we call eternity has taken its place, a 
concept which includes all the phenomena and 
content of life, moral and spiritual and aesthetic, 
as well as material. 

The days and hours are ever glancing by, 
And seem to flicker past thro' sun and shade 
Or short, or long, as Pleasure leads, or Pain ; 
But with the Nameless is nor Day nor Hour ; 
Tho' we, thin minds, who creep from thought to 

thought, 
Break into " Thens " and " Whens " the Eternal 

Now : 
This double seeming of the single world ! x 

1 Tennyson, " The Ancient Sage." 

143 



THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST 

Compare, for an example of this as a practical 
working faith as opposed to a mere theory or ideal, 
the remarkable words written home from France 
by Lieut. W. G. Gladstone, in his last letter before 
his death : " It is not the length of existence that 
counts, but what is achieved during that existence, 
however short " ; a similar sentiment to — 

A crowded hour of glorious life 
Is worth an age without a name ; 

and both implying the supremacy of what is 
immaterial over the time-element. 

" Such familiar problems as the infinity of space 
and time, the nature of time-succession, and the 
relation of subject and object, suggest very cogently 
that the world as known to science must be only an 
abstract view of reality. More especially, perhaps, 
does our faculty for transcending time in our 
thoughts convince us that our minds are not in 
time, but, rather, time in them ; and so we are 
led on to the idea of eternity. Our spiritual faculty, 
weak and fitful as it is, strongly supports the belief 
that the real world is an eternal, immaterial world 
which reflects the whole counsels of the Creator, 
while the world of space and time was created as 
a sphere for the working out of God's finite pur- 
poses — His thoughts shaping themselves as acts of 
will. So our hearts' true home is in a sphere where 
change and chance cannot hurt us." 

" It is simply not the fact that, in our experience 
of it, one hour or one day is as long as any other. 

144 



THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST 

The " length " of time depends not on the clock, 
but, once more, on the inner self. ' It seemed an 
age/ ' It seemed no time ' — these common phrases 
are admissions of the relative unreality of time as 
an element in the measure of life in the true human 
sense. . . . Life at its highest human level, which 
is the highest reality we know, can only be measured 
by intensity, not by what one might call ' area,' 
nor yet by mere duration. . . . Eternity is not an 
infinite extension of time, but, if you will, the 
existence without limit of a state of affairs in which 
time is forgotten. Imagine a set of circumstances 
in which, for sheer joie de vivre, you ' forget time ' ; 
imagine that all the factors in the situation thus 
created, yourself among them, remain constant, or 
constantly self-adapting to their whole environ- 
ment, so that no change for the worse at any 
point can remind you that you have forgotten it, 
by ' calling you back to earth/ as the phrase is ; 
and you get some faint idea of what is meant by 
' Eternity/ and ' Heaven/ and ' Eternal Life/ " * 

(It is worthy of note that the apocalyptists 
conceived of "a time when time should be no 
more " ; 2 Enoch xxxiii. 2 speaks of " a time of 
not-counting, endless, with neither years nor months 
nor weeks nor days nor hours." C/. 2 Baruch 
xvii. 1 : " With the Most High account is not 
taken of much time nor of a few years " ; xlviii. 13 : 
"But with Thee hours are as a time and days as 

1 Foakes- Jackson, The Faith and the War, Essays by 
Dr. Inge, p. 108, and Mr. Burroughs, p. 169 ; cf. F. R. 
Barry, Religion and the War, pp. 58, 83. 

145 



THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST 

generations "-; li. 9 : " Time shall no longer age 
them." And there is in the attitude of the prophets 
generally an elimination of time, a foreshortening of 
view. So convinced are they of the ultimate 
triumph of righteousness and the supremacy of 
God that already they see these realised in the very 
near future. The brightness of their vision blinds 
them to the darker side of the picture, as when to 
the pilgrim Christian the glory of the Heavenly 
City hides the difficulties of the country which 
must be traversed before it can be reached. See 
Tyrrell, p. 172; A. E. J. Rawlinson, Dogma, Fact, 
and Experience, pp. 150 ff .) 

For life includes time, even if life be subject in a 
measure to its limitations. The same kind of thing 
happens here as at the Incarnation of Jesus Christ — 
the unlimited becomes to a certain degree limited, 
and the non-material subject to the restrictions of 
earth ; the transcendent is also immanent. Yet 
like the other paradox that nature is ruled only by 
being obeyed, life triumphs over time, and slips 
from its grasp. To God, the Supreme, even if 
there be progress, life must be in a sense static 
(with Him a thousand years are as one day) ; we 
cannot get behind the belief that God Is, and that 
His existence is one eternal Now. C/. Philo, 
Quod Deus Sit Immut. 6 : " God is withdrawn from 
both ends of Time. For His life is not so much 
Time as Eternity (aloiv), the archetype and pattern 
of Time. And in Eternity there is nothing past and 
nothing future, but only present/' If the simile 
may be pardoned, life and the world is like a vast 

146 



THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST 

witch's cauldron, parts of which are now bubbling 
up with tremendous energy, and parts quiescent ; 
yet the immature and the mature, the vigorous 
and the feeble, the active and the inactive, united 
in a single whole, both in thought and act, which 
is gradually reaching the desired condition intended 
for it by its owner and controller. (See above, p. 68.) 
Man resents strongly being told to wait for an 
indefinite future, just as much as he resents the 
childish and puerile conceptions of a visible return 
on the clouds of heaven, as depicted by Jewish 
apocalyptic and his Advent Hymns. The problems 
of life are urgent ; they, at all events, are present, 
and he wants immediate relief, or at least power to 
meet and deal with them. His robuster nature 
refuses to allow that they must all be met with a 
quietism, and a pious hope that u in the next world M 
things will be put right. He feels instinctively, 
even if he does not accept St. Paul, that he is a 
fellow-worker with God ; and he feels sure that 
fellowship with God may be a present possession, 
and that this will necessarily mean a present 
possession of divine power and strength. Hence, 
the rise and popularity, in all ages, of mystery- 
cults ; and may we not confidently assert that the 
present day popularity of mysticism, the growth 
of " Christian Science/ 1 of philosophies bearing 
such names as Pragmatism, Vitalism, of concepts 
like " elan vital/' " evolution cr6atrice/' and the 
writing of books like Bishop Chandler's Cult of the 
Passing Moment, are due to this fundamental 
demand of human nature, and to the Church's 

147 



THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST 

mistaken policy of teaching people to look to the 
future (which ever recedes), instead of helping them 
to find the power and fellowship of God in the 
present ? 

If this suggestion, that Our Lord's Return, so 
clearly foretold and promised by Him, be under- 
stood as having taken place in the descent of the 
Holy Spirit at Pentecost — and the suggestion is 
not made solely on the writer's own authority : it 
is supported both by Dr. Sanday (p. 115 : " What is 
the essential meaning of the kingdom of God . . . 
but the Apostolic doctrine of the Holy Spirit ? " ; 
p. 122 : " I am inclined to believe — though this is 
speculation, that I would not express otherwise 
than very tentatively — that the real coming of the 
Kingdom — the fact corresponding to it in the field 
of ultimate realities — is what we are in the habit 
of calling the work of the Holy Spirit, from the Day 
of Pentecost onwards " *) ; and at least hinted at 
by others ; if this suggestion be accepted, then 
most of the difficulties connected with both the 
interpretation of the M Second Advent " and its 
practical issue disappear. 

In the first place, it entirely solves the difficulties 
about the non-fulfilment of Our Lord's words, that 
His Return and the Coming of the Kingdom were 
to be accomplished within the present generation. 2 
We need not exercise ourselves because the disciples 



1 Christologies, Ancient and Modern, p. 183. 

2 Cf. p. 73. 

148 



THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST 

did not realise this at the time, or fully. The 
/3\clklk6v irados is common all through life; men hunt 
for things long and fail to see them, though they 
be rolling about at their feet all the time. x Virtutem 
incolumem odimus. " He came unto His own, and 
they that were His own received Him not." More 
than once the Evangelists record that His disciples 
f< understood not the saying " ; and it was some 
time before they actually realised what and who 
He was ; up to the very last they could not shake 
off their prejudices and pre-suppositions. 2 We 
have already seen that a double strand of inter- 
pretation runs through the New Testament doctrine 
of the Kingdom, and it is in one of the latest of the 
New Testament writings, the Gospel of St. John, 
that we find the most idealised and least material 
and detailed interpretation of Our Lord's words. 
This is all psychologically correct, and is just what 
we need. 3 Historically, we are far removed from 
the first disciples, and a long process of interpretation 
and a vastly different experience lies between us. 
If they were perplexed and mistaken at first, and 
later came to a fuller and clearer perception of the 
truth, it is for us to begin where they left off, not 
where they began ; it is sheer blundering to make 
their early mistakes and then think there is no way 
out of the difficulty. Our modern way of thinking 
tells us that a " Second Advent," in the literal, 

1 Plat. Rep. 432^. 

2 See Mark vi. 51, vii. 18, viii. 17, ix. 10, 32, x. 35 ; 
Luke xxii. 24, xxiv. 25, 38 ; John xii. 16, xvi. 17 ; Acts i. 6. 

3 Cf. Rashdall, op. cit., Lecture V, and pp. 167, 196. 

149 



THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST 

sensuous, Jewish sense, is not needed, but would be 
a reversion, something retrogressive instead of an 
advance. a We do not want anything which would 
resemble a second Incarnation ; neither does the 
New Testament, when viewed and interpreted 
rightly, tell us to expect it. The contradictions, 
or, rather, the development, traceable in its pages, 
are among the most noteworthy and helpful of its 
features. The disciples who received and experi- 
enced the power of the Holy Spirit were led by 
Him nearer to the truth ; and if they did not in so 
many words identify His coming with the coming 
of the Christ in His kingdom, they did identify it 
in thought and idea. And that they did not think 
things out carefully and logically, and record their 
conclusions in a Summa Theologiae, need not 
surprise us ; a missionary Church has other, and 
for the time being more important, work to do ; 
and present enjoyment does not favour introspection 
and reflection. 2 Later ages are called upon for 
these, and the dispensation of the Spirit is not ended. 
We cannot, alas ! claim the purity of the Apostolic 
age, but we may claim that the number of Scribes 
who have been made disciples to the Kingdom of 
Heaven is not yet exhausted, or the power and 
liberty to bring forth out of the Scriptural treasury 
things new and old. Is not man's physiognomy 
suggestive in this connection ? He possesses two 
eyes and two ears, but only one mouth ; so that 
he can see both sides of any question, and hear 

1 Cf. Winstanley, p. 365. 

2 Dr. Kennedy rightly emphasises this point. 

150 



THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST 

two contradictory descriptions of it, but both are 
combined in the expression of truth which he 
utters. So often is the question raised " Which is 
true, this ? or that ? " And the only answer which 
will satisfy the claims of truth is " Neither, because 
both." 1 

Then, in the second place, this interpretation so 
aptly meets the need of this, and, indeed, of every 
age. No more practical doctrine could have been 
invented or put forward. No teaching could more 
attract and claim the allegiance of men, appeal to 
their imaginations, enlist their sympathies, and 
inspire their efforts. The coming of the Holy Spirit 
literally worked wonders ; and the world could 
not fail to take notice of it, or be attracted to it. 
Even if we make allowance for the point of view 
and the pardonable enthusiasm of the writer, we 
cannot evade the impression given by Acts of the 
infectious nature of Christianity ; it was a religion 
that " worked," and worked quickly and amazingly, 
and effectually ; lives were changed, powers were 
conveyed, and false teaching collapsed and sur- 
rendered. For centuries the lives of Christians and 
the doings of the Church amazed mankind ; and 
it is common history that the Gospel of Christ has 
been the inspiration of all philanthropy, social 
reform, and progressive civilisation. When the 
Church's devotion to Christ waned, her grip of the 

1 For the idea of a progressive revelation and the need 
of experience for the interpretation of Christianity, see 
Essay VI, by Canon J. M. Wilson, in Cambridge Theological 
Essays (1905) ; and Rashdall, op. cit., Lect. V. 

151 



THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST 

Holy Spirit weakened ; and religion became religi- 
osity, it withdrew from the world and became a 
thing apart, a thing either of mere speculation or 
of monastic practice. Instead of facing life boldly, 
and trying to leaven the world, men's devotion took 
a wrong turn, became intensive instead of extensive ; 
and despairing of this world, they dreamed of a 
" sweet and blessed country " elsewhere ; and they 
rightly incurred the just censure of being " other- 
worldly/' Whereas in the first ages the activities 
of Martha and Mary were rightly combined, in a 
later time the Marys left the Marthas in the lurch, 
so that Martha frequently now goes on her useful 
way without regard to Jesus ; and Mary, lacking 
the corrective of Martha's discipline, is painfully 
worried about her own soul and the problems of 
eternity, and not infrequently finds that the presence 
of Jesus fails to satisfy and even irks. 

For it must be carefully remembered that the 
Kingdom is described in ethical terms, and this of 
necessity pre-supposes human society, and, for the 
present, this world. In the Prayer of the kingdom, 
God's will is to be done on earth as it is in heaven ; 
and we have no suggestion that the Prayer or the 
efforts pre-supposed by it were to cease with Christ's 
Return. x 

In all ages, men need a religion that " works " ; 
a religion that both bears fruit outwardly and also 
satisfies inwardly. Life and life's problems and 
necessities are only too urgent and real, and they 

1 Cf. Von Hiigel, p. 62. 

152 



THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST 

will neither wait nor be silenced. And as Martha 
cannot really manage without Mary's way, so 
neither will Mary's way satisfy unless conjoined 
with Martha's. As Dr. MacNeile has so aptly 
pointed out, 1 Martha and Mary represent not two 
persons, but two essential sides of the same person, 
without either of which the person is not complete. 
And if we only realise the present and immediate 
call of Christ in the presence of His Holy Spirit ; 
if we only realise that every day, and every moment 
of each day, is in varying degree, a Last Day, a 
day of judgment, of decision, of crisis, the issue of 
which inevitably affects both our own souls and the 
human race for good or ill ; we shall neither find 
life dull or unsatisfying, nor incur the charge of 
being other-worldly. Men will tackle problems and 
face life boldly, shoulder its burdens and respond 
to its calls ; and, if history be any criterion, the 
power of the Spirit will be no less real than as at 
first ; and in the effort to " live dangerously," in 
the full and active service and facing of the moment, 
in the conscious power and presence of the Holy 
Spirit, will be found a joie de vivre that has no 
parallel. 

No words can ever convince men of the reality 
of the Holy Spirit ; only experiment and experience 
can do this. The proof of religion, like that of 
puddings and everything else, is in the tasting. 
He who is convinced can only say : " O taste and 

1 Self -training in Prayer, p. 37. 

153 



THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST 

see that the Lord is good," knowing that if the 
test is made honestly and faithfully the answer 
will come : " Now we believe, not because of thy 
speaking : for we have heard for ourselves, and 
know that this is indeed the Saviour of the world." 

Honestly and faithfully : because the Holy 
Spirit is not perceptible except to sympathetic 
natures, the Kingdom is not revealed except to 
those willing and desirous to become its subjects. 
" The natural (i.e., earthly) man receiveth not the 
things of the Spirit of God, because they are spirit- 
ually discerned." The temper and attitude of the 
little child is the first requisite ; and then " He 
that willeth to do His will shall know of the teach- 
ing." To the nature that is severely critical, or 
self-confident, or proud of its own attainments and 
powers, or self-seeking, or enslaved to things of 
earth, or impenitent, the ways of the Spirit are a 
sealed book. There must be true harmony before 
the responsive note is evoked. Christ's coming is 
visible only to those who wish to see, and from 
right motives. For " there are none so blind as 
those who won't see " ; and all the efforts of 
prophet and teacher will only make their heart fat 
and their ears dull of hearing and close their eyes, 
so that they shall not turn again and be healed. 

And this perception is with us, as with the 
disciples, progressive. We have to " follow on to 
know the Lord." At first the vision may be 
dazzling, and the conviction so forcible that the 
memory of it is ineradicable ; but whether the 
vision of the kingdom come as to St. Paul, or 

154 



THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST 

whether it be but as the dawn, coming gradually 
and fitfully, the knowledge and the experience of 
Christ as come and coming in His Holy Spirit 
grows with each new experience of life, and as 
life unfolds its various possibilities, problems, and 
activities, " It shineth more and more unto the 
perfect day." None of us knows as yet "as he 
ought to know " ; it is but " in part, and dimly " ; 
but even such knowledge as we do possess warrants 
the conviction that some day we shall know fully, 
and " face to face." The divine lover finds that 
to-day's love is indeed " a little more than yester- 
day's, and a little less than to-morrow's." At all 
events, the kingship of Christ is evident, and that 
is the chief thing. It is evident from the pages of 
Acts and the rest of the New Testament. It is 
written and revealed all down the scroll of history ; 
one stronghold of the world after another has given 
way before Christ ; if a sufficiently broad and long 
view be taken of human activity, there is no doubt 
that progress in the true and right sense has been 
and is being made. 1 It is recorded in human 
biography, in the many " conversions " from the 
world, the flesh, the devil, and self, to the service 
of Christ, from giants like Saul of Tarsus, Augustine, 
Francis of Assisi, to the humblest in the ranks of 
the Salvation Army. It is for ever recurring in the 
mission field, where sin and error and misery recede 
before the armies of the Cross, as even the pages of 



1 See essays by Miss Gardner and the Editor, in Foakes- 
Jackson, The Faith and the War. 

155 



THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST 

Government Blue Books show. It is as evident in 
our own experience, the experience of those who 
have taken God at His Word, who have long resisted 
His voice, but have had to give in at the last, who 
have traced His Hand weaving the web of their 
lives — " the divinity that shapes our ends " — who 
have had their prayers answered, who have been 
delivered when nothing human could have availed 
them, who have taken His yoke, and " found it 
sweet to bear." 

The " fellowship of the Holy Spirit " is not a 
thing only for the future ; we need not wait for 
death before we can enter heaven. (Does not our 
catechism teach us that we are " inheritors of the 
Kingdom of Heaven " ? and an inheritor is no 
longer an heir, expectant ; he has received and 
entered upon his heritage.) Wordsworth's beautiful 
lament about heaven lying about us in our infancy, 
and the shades of the prison-house then closing in 
upon us, until the glory fades into the light of 
common day, is at bottom quite wrong. There is 
no essential need that the glory shall fade, and 
heaven lies about us all our life ; it is only our own 
sinfulness and the evil in the world and others 
that drive away the glory — 

Two worlds are ours ; 'tis only sin 

Forbids us to descry 
The mystic heaven and earth within, 

Plain as the sea and sky. 1 

1 Keble, Christian Year, Septuagesima. 

156 



THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST 

Truth is many-sided ; she is free, and will not 
be confined. And already she has asserted her 
contraries, showing us that the kingdom is both 
past, and present, and future. The New Testament 
identifies the kingdom with " life," and life, in all 
its senses and applications, involves growth and 
progress and continuity. " The coming and king- 
dom of Christ are in their nature a process, which 
has definite historical beginning, but stretches on 
indefinitely into future ages of ages." x As we 
know it, life is subject to the time-element, even if 
life be not a matter of length, or number of days, 
a matter of 7r6io<; not 77-60-0?. Life is both in time 
and above it, conditioned by it, yet transcending it. 
"If we indulge in speculation, we may argue that 
the static view of God in Himself is mistaken, and 
that we ought to take a dynamic — God is not state 
but process, not nature but purpose ; our theology 
should be a teleology rather than an ontology." 2 
Arist., Metaphysics xi, 10726 : " His activity, ever 
busy with itself, constitutes His perfect and eternal 
life. . . . God is an eternal perfect being, so that 
life, and continuous eternal duration (alcov aovexys 
zeal dihuos pertain to God, for God is indeed all this." 
And life knows nothing of catastrophes ; what seem 
to be such are but the sudden ripening of harvests 
long sown and developing, the culmination and 
effect of causes deep-seated and ancient. Life is 
all of a piece ; and such " catastrophes " imme- 
diately produce their effects, whose growth and 

1 Terry, p. 250. 2 Garvie 

157 



THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST 

connections are clearly traceable before and after. 
Natura nil facit per saltum, iravra pel, are sound 
axioms; "nature never jumps " — "all is flux, 
nothing constant " ; and eternal life would not be 
life were the Christ to descend from heaven on the 
clouds, and inaugurate a new order of things, in 
which perfection were finally and instantaneously 
reached, irrespective of human endeavour, limita- 
tions, failings, and aspirations. " The future life 
is not a reward of obedience to a law now, but the 
continuing and completion of a vital process here 
begun, there ended." 1 "Eternal life with Jesus 
is not an artificial reward, but rather the consumma- 
tion of personality which is determined by faith 
and relationship with God. ... To be saved is 
something more than to win the blessings of an 
acquittal at the Judgment Day of Judaism. It is, 
rather, to possess a quality of life due to the soul's 
relation with God through faith, which will even- 
tuate in those blessed results which are pictured by 
the Gospels in terms of the Apocalypse." 2 "A 
state of completeness excluding all imperfections 
absolutely and at once, violates the law of gradual 
evolution which conditions created existences. It 
is more philosophical to believe that the souls of 
the righteous pass into another state in the degree 
of advancement they have attained to in this ; 
their freedom from gross bodily bonds giving them 



1 A. E. Garvie, " The Christian Ideal/' Htbbert Journal, 
July, 1916. 

2 Shailer Matthews, in Hastings, D C G, i, p. 423. 

158 



THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST 

a new facility in apprehending the Infinite Creator/ ' x 
" Our posthumous life, whatever there may be in 
it additional to our present, yet may not be entirely 
beginning anew, but going on. Death may in 
some sort, and in some respects, answer to our 
birth, which is not a suspension of the faculties 
which we had before it, or a total change of the 
state of life in which we existed when in the womb ; 
but a continuation of both, with such and such 
great alterations. ,,2 

If it be asked whether eternal life involves never- 
ending growth, and whether there be growth in 
the Godhead ; we answer that there has been 
growth of a kind in the Godhead, in the sense of a 
progressive manifestation, and the Incarnation and 
Pentecost marked the stages in it, when the Second 
and Third Persons of the Holy Trinity were revealed. 
And the growth is still in progress in the " building 
up of the Body of Christ, " by which man, in his 
infinite diversity, is brought into the right relation 
to the one Unity, and is made part of it. It is, of 
course, true that growth can hardly be an attribute 
of perfection, but that when perfection is reached 
the energy previously exercised in growth is trans- 
ferred to other forms of activity. If mathematical 
analogies be permitted, the Holy Trinity represent 
an equilaterial triangle, or a perfect circle ; and 
when all the wheels of the machine are true circles, 
when all impediments are removed, when all is 
tightened up and in place, and the true design 

1 Davidson, p. 158. 

2 Butler, Anal. I, i. 

159 



THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST 

and proportion reached, and all energised by the 
One Spirit in obedience to the Supreme Will after 
the example of the Eternal Son, then doubtless 
there is something for it to do, which will in due 
time be revealed. * 

But we are a long way off that ; Christ may have 
" abolished death, and brought life and incorruption 
to light through the Gospel/' but " it doth not yet 
appear what we shall be " ; and the New Testa- 
ment, whether in Our Lord's teaching or in that 
of His followers, never lets us forget that the 
Kingdom, though present and active and powerful, 
is not yet complete ; it is still future ; the " measure 
of the stature of the fulness of Christ " is not yet 
reached ; Satan may have fallen like lightning 
from heaven, but he is not yet finally subdued ; 
the Christian is still at war, a soldier on service ; 
the sphere of preaching, implied in Matt. x. 23, 
xxiv. 14, xxviii. 19, has widened vastly since those 
words were spoken, and the evangelisation of the 
world is not yet complete ; each day sees the advent 
of new lives into the world, and to them, too, must 

1 For the concept of Eternal Life, see the last chapter 
in Von Hiigel's remarkable book on that subject. He 
defines it as : " An experience, requirement, force, con- 
ception, ideal which is, in endless degrees and ways, latent 
or potent in every specifically human life and act; which, 
in its fullest operativeness, and its most vivid recognition, 
is specifically religious; and which, in proportion to such 
fulness and recognition, is found to involve the conscious- 
ness, or possession, of all the highest realities and goods 
sought after or found by man, and the sense (more or 
less) of non-succession, of a complete Present and Presence, 
of an utterly abiding Here and Now." (Pp. 1, 2.) 

160 



THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST 

the Gospel be preached. The Church, the Body 
of Christ, is still far from comprising the whole of 
humanity ; the wedding-robe of the Bride of the 
Lamb is neither complete nor spotless as yet ; so 
that Christ is still a " Christ that is to be." " The 
Founder of Christianity came and promulgated 
principles capable of regenerating the world ; and 
no future coming can be expected, unless the 
increased efficacy which those principles exert be 
called so." * And this is why so much place is 
given in the New Testament to the thought of 
hope ; why so much rebuke and exhortation are 
found in it ; so much praise and blame ; the tares 
still disfigure the wheat-field and mar its crop. 
We can confidently assert that Our Lord's words 
were fulfilled at Pentecost, that His Kingdom 
came then in a manner and degree unparalleled 
before or since ; but all the time we know that 
we have not uttered the whole truth, that our 
experience tells us only too surely that His kingship 
is not complete. His power is too sadly conditioned 
by the weakness of our human wills ; His Presence 
is not easily kept ; and the world is not a nice 
place to live in, because it has not yet been won 
to Christ. If man records his own verdicts against 
himself, and if these are worked out in his own 
history and experience, there are also only too many 
wrongs and injustices, suspicions and misunder- 
standings, which are not set right in this world. 
Man's experiences are often the verdicts of other 

1 Davidson, p. 31. 

161 



THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST 

men as well as his own ; and these judgments, 
when not malicious, are necessarily biassed and 
based on limited knowledge. So that man must 
needs wait for " another world " before he can 
receive his final deserts and vindication ; and be 
it noted that vindication is more probable than 
condemnation ; as St. Paul says : " Judge nothing 
before the time, until the Lord come, who will 
both bring to light the hidden things of darkness, 
and make manifest the counsels of the hearts ; and 
then shall each man have his praise from God." x 
In a sense, we may liken the Early Church at 
its very infancy to Eden before the Fall ; for 
a brief moment and in a small sphere everything 
was perfect ; but perfection needed to be extended, 
the perfection was a limited perfection ; and only 
too soon was it made imperfect by human failure. 
The imperfection still obtains. Even the devout- 
est of saints, enjoying the fullest and most frequent 
of mystic visions, cannot find therein more than 
a temporary satisfaction ; for the words of 
Joseph are true in another sense and on Another's 
lips : "Ye shall not see my face, except your 
brother be with you," i.e., the Beatific Vision is not 
to be enjoyed to the full, or fully realised, except 
in company with all the Saints, and the number 
of the " blessed company of all faithful people " is 
intended to comprise all mankind, So that until 
all humanity is won to Christ the Kingdom is not 
complete. 

1 1 Cor. iv. 5. 

162 



THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST 

Science tells us, in the twentieth century, that 
at some far distant epoch this material earth and 
system will lose its heat and revert to a condition of 
cold and death ; and there is nothing more certain 
than that the material existence of the individual 
man is limited ; so that the spiritual, as far as we 
can tell, is alone permanent. It is even asserted 
that a succession of cycles is the only tenable 
explanation of the material universe, i.e., that no 
progress may be looked for therein. x And the 
spiritual is alone unchangeable ; in this sense, that 
we are for ever changing our bodies, even sharing 
our thoughts, but our characters and our per- 
sonalities are for ever our own. We seem inevitably 
to look forward to an existence purely spiritual, 
and, therefore, freed from the limitations of matter. 
We believe that when we die we pass to a state of 
existence far fuller and freer, and with our capacities 
greatly enhanced ; we come closer to God and 
realise more fully our divine destiny. We believe 
that life will still be social, with possibilities of 
mutual intercourse and service, with the old loving 
relationships and memories still continued and even 
intensified. We believe that there will be work 
for us to do, and that we shall realise more fully 
our ideals — 

And only the Master shall praise us, and only the 

Master shall blame; 
And no one shall work for money, and no one shall 

work for fame, 

1 Foakes- Jackson, The Faith and the War, p. 105 ; 
Essay by Dr. Inge. 

163 



THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST 

But each for the joy of the working, and each, in 

his separate star, 
Shall draw the Thing as he sees It for the God of 

Things as they Are ! l 

But, just as humanity lies still partly in the 
power of the Evil One, so the " muddy vesture of 
decay doth grossly clothe it in, ,, and matter is 
still to be reckoned as an element in life. And so, 
as Dr. Burkitt truly says, Pentecost may have 
been indeed an early sheaf of first-fruits, the pledge 
of what is to be ; but it was not the harvest. 2 

It cannot be too greatly emphasised that the 
kingship of Christ is dependent on the co-operation 
of human will and effort for its realisation. It is 
an act of grace on God's part ; the teaching of the 
apocalyptists leaves no doubt of that ; God sends 
His Messiah entirely of His own will, be it in pur- 
suance of His Covenant with Israel (no less an act 
of grace) ; or because of the eternal law of righteous- 
ness, to judge or to save ; or out of pity ; man can 
neither cause nor occasion it, not can he alter the 
time or the manner determined by the Father. 
But it is nevertheless true that when inaugurated, 
as at Pentecost, it needs human co-operation for 
its completion and full accomplishment. The com- 
ing of the kingdom is the doing of God's Will by 
men as by angels. Men must work out their own 
Salvation. The gifts given by the Saviour unto 
men at Pentecost were in their endless variety all 
intended for the same end and process, " The 
perfecting of the saints unto the work of ministering, 

1 R. Kipling, V L'Envoi." 2 P. 49. 

164 



THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST 

unto the building up of the Body of Christ ; till 
we all attain unto the unity of the faith, and of the 
knowledge of the Son of God, unto a full-grown 
man, unto the measure of the stature of the fulness 
of Christ. ,, x It is the failure to realise this essential 
truth which has delayed and discredited the kingdom 
so long, has made the life of the Church so ineffective, 
and has deprived individuals of a much-needed 
stimulus. " The purpose of God for us, in us, and 
through us, by the working of His indwelling 
Spirit, apprehended and interpreted by means of 
the highest revelation that has ever been experienced 
in humanity, is a grander thing to seek and know 
and to make the lode-star of our earthly conduct 
than any curious or morbid interest in the manner 
of this world's disintegration, the end of the, to us, 
immeasurable universe, or even the ultimate issues 
of personal being." 2 

What should be the attitude of the devout 
Christian towards God and his present life, in view 
of this belief, that Christ has already come, in His 
Holy Spirit, but that the Christian hope is not yet 
fully realised ? He can read it in 2 Cor. v. 2-9 : 3 
" For we know that if the earthly house of our 
tabernacle be dissolved, we have a building from 
God, a house not made with hands, eternal, in the 
heavens. For verily in this we groan, longing to 
be clothed upon with our habitation which is from 

1 Eph. iv. 13. 2 Winstanley, p. 384. 

3 For the interpre ation of which, see Charles, Escha- 
tology, p 400, Cf. 2 Pet. iii. 11, 12; Dewick, p. 218. 

165 



THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST 

heaven, seeing that being clothed upon we shall not 
be found naked. For indeed we that are in this 
tabernacle do groan, being burdened ; not for that 
we would be un-clothed, but that we would be 
clothed upon, that what is mortal may be swallowed 
up of life. Now He that wrought us for this very 
thing is God, Who gave unto us the earnest of the 
Spirit. Being therefore always of good courage, 
and knowing that, whilst we are at home in the 
body, we are absent from the Lord (for we walk 
by faith, not by sight) ; we are of good courage, I 
say, and choose rather to be absent from the body, 
and to be at home with the Lord. Wherefore also 
we make it our aim, whether at home or absent, 
to be well-pleasing unto Him. ,, 

Come, Holy Ghost, our souls inspire, 
And lighten with celestial fire ; 
Thou the Anointing Spirit art, 
Who dost Thy sevenfold gifts impart ; 
Thy blessed unction from above 
Is comfort, life, and fire of love. 

Enable with perpetual light 
The dulness of our blinded sight ; 
Anoint and cheer our soiled face 
With the abundance of Thy grace; 
Keep far our foes; give peace at home ; 
Where Thou art Guide no ill can come. 

Teach us to know the Father, Son, 
And Thee (of both), to be but one ; 
That through the ages all along 
This may be our endless song — 
Praise to Thy eternal merit, 
Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. 

166 



INDEX 



Ahikar, Story of, 46 
aldov, 66 

" Beloved," 33, 41 

" Chosen," 33, 41 
" Consummation of the Age," 
66, 125 

Day of Judgment, 21, 69, 125, 

127, 129 
Dives and Lazarus, 28 

Elijah, 39 

" End of the World," 66, 125 

Eschatology, value of, 57, 140 

of Acts, 99 

of Early Church, 49, 5ln, 

78, 124, 150 

of Christ, Ch. I, and pp. 

71, 79, 96 

of Hebrews, 100 

of St. James, 101 

, Jewish, 53, 76, 87, 120 

of St. Jude, 101 

of St. Paul, 102, 165 

of St. Peter, 101 

of Revelation, 109 



Eternal, 67, 145, 158, 160 

Fire, 19 

Gehenna, 18 

" Great Assize, The," 13 

Guardian Angels, 40 



Holy Spirit, The, Preface, 
115, 119, 148, 153 

John, St., Teaching of, 30, 45, 

82, 84, 102 
Judgment, 21, 125, 127 

Kingdom, 61, 90, 120, 131, 
152, 161, 164 

11 Last Day," 69, 129 

" Little Apocalypse, The," 71, 

74 
Luke, St., Teaching of, 27, 41, 

71, 83 

Matthew, St., Teaching of, 4, 
32, 71 

Messianic banquet, 20 

Paradise, 30 

Parousia, 70, 119, 131, 141, 148 

Pentecost, 115, 121, 130, 148, 

164 
Progress, 135 
Prophecy, 137 

" Regeneration, The," 24 

Son of Man, 58 
Spiritualising, 80, 104, 110, 113 

Tares, Parable of, 22, 84, 

125 ff, 140 
Time, 68, 141 
" Two Ways, The," 19 

Worm, 19 



Printed by Sir Isaac Pitman & Sons, Ltd., Bath, England 



BY THE SAME AUTHOR, 8. P. T. PRIDE AUX, B.D. 

THE 

CRADLE OF CHRISTIANITY 

OR, SOME ACCOUNT OF THE TIMES OF CHRIST 

Foreword by the Rev. Canon Vaughan, M.A. 
Crown 8vo, cloth gilt, 178 pp. 2 s. net. 



FROM THE FOREWORD 
The little volume is admirably suited to its purpose. Nowhere, in so 
small a compass, do I know such a clear and scholarly account of the 
religious and social conditions under which Christ was born. The chapters 
on the Messianic Hope, on Hellenism, on Apocalyptic Literature are 
excellent; while the treatment of the sects and parties of the Jews reveals 
a full knowledge of the latest researches on the subject. I heartily 
recommend the little book. 



The Guardian: " In point of size, in succinctness, and in graphic and 
accurate grouping of facts Mr. Prideaux's description of the conditions 
of the times prior to and circumstantial with the Gospel history will fill 
a real gap." 

The Challenge: " Mr. Prideaux's book should be eagerly welcomed, 
for here is set down in small compass the main outlines of the Hebrew 
customs, religious sects, modes of thought, political, religious and social 
atmosphere of the day. The Biblical references are very full and the 
book is altogether most welcome." 

The Daily Graphic: " . . . an admirable sketch of the geography and 
social manners and customs of Palestine in the time of Christ." 

The Church Monthly: " It is a scholarly production, the result of great 
research and wide knowledge, and depicts the religious and social con- 
ditions under which Christ was born and lived. It should be eminently 
useful to teachers and students of training colleges." 

The Churchman: " Written in a most readable manner, and specially 
useful to theological students, Sunday School teachers and Christian 
workers. . . . The book is marked by scholarship, lucidity and 
compactness." 

Church of Ireland Gazette: " This is a capital little book. We have 
often felt the need of something of the kind to recommend to teachers." 

International Review of Missions: " May be heartily commended to 
those who desire a careful guide to the chief points of interest in early 
Judaism." 

Caritas: " Like his namesake of many years ago, the author has given 
us an excellent ' connexion between the Old and New Testaments,* full, 
lucid, well documented, and based on the best authorities. The book 
is intended chiefly for teachers and students of training colleges, but will 
be of much use also to the intelligent layman who wishes to understand 
his New Testament." 

The School World: " Deserves to be very widely known. It attempts, 
with marked success, to give a clear glimpse of the Palestinian world into 
which the Messiah was born. . . . The work is scholarly and trustworthy, 
and at the same time clear and readable. Careful writing and painstaking 
research are evidenced in every chapter." 

Of all Booksellers 
LONDON: SIR ISAAC PITMAN & SONS, LTD., 1 AMEN CORNER, E.C. 



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